Senegal’s former President, Macky Sall, a candidate for United Nations Secretary-General, recently declared that he is MAGA and wants to make the U.N. great again.
If only that were possible.
I recently testified on Capitol Hill about the need for reforms at the international body and where Congress could have an impact.
What the U.N. doesn’t need is another Secretary-General who continues to promote radical sexual and gender ideology and abortion in U.N. policy and practice and impose these positions on countries around the world. For that to happen, the U.S. government must seek assurances from the eventual successor to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that they will put an end to this.
On Thursday, the Security Council took a series of secret straw polls on the candidates. The 15 members of the council will indicate on a secret ballot whether they encourage, discourage, or express no opinion on each candidate. Candidates who are discouraged by a permanent member of the council (France, the Russian Federation, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States) are expected to quietly withdraw their names from the race.
For his part, Guterres has been a staunch ally of the European left in mainstreaming woke abortion, gender ideology, and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in all U.N. policies. Such is the power of the position.
The current leading candidates to replace him are as radical in their beliefs and would do great harm to an important institution that needs real reform.
Chilean politician Michelle Bachelet, who promised to promote abortion-on-demand until the moment of birth, is the favorite. She has been carefully groomed by the European Union and progressive countries for over a decade.
“We need to continue advancing women’s rights,” she told journalists after a three-hour interview with the General Assembly. Bachelet emphasized that as Secretary-General, she would ensure that “CEDAW committee decisions are implemented.”
The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women has repeatedly said that abortion must be decriminalized in all circumstances and that governments must pay for abortions. The committee monitors implementation of the Equal Rights Amendment and promotes the notion that transgender identifying individuals must have access to sex-reassignment procedures, including for children, and that they must have access to facilities and government benefits.
In March, a congressional letter calling her a “pro-abortion zealot” asked U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to veto her nomination.
The alternate candidate that Europeans have put forward is Costa Rica’s Rebecca Grynspan, another U.N. official who has used her previous role to lobby against anti-abortion legislation in Nicaragua, although her body of work has not been subjected to the same scrutiny as Bachelet’s.
Maria Fernanda Espinoza of Ecuador, who entered the race later, said she was “deeply concerned with recent normative attacks on human rights, including women’s and girls’ full enjoyment of human rights and gender equality,” during a three-hour interview with U.N. Ambassadors in the General Assembly.
Espinoza has also been a leader of the network of abortion-rights and feminist groups that control the U.N. agenda on women’s issues. After leaving office, she was appointed to the steering committee of the Generation Equality Forum, a U.N. conference that streamlined gender ideology across the entire U.N. system.
Probably worse of all, Espinoza colluded with the European Union to silence the U.S. delegation at the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women in March. As chair of the commission, she showed contempt for the U.S. delegation. She deliberately steered a procedural vote so as to block a U.S. attempt to stop U.N. promotion of gender ideology.
The push for a strong feminist woman comes from billionaire George Soros, who is leading the charge. Through his Open Society Foundation, Soros has funded the 1 for 8 Billion campaign, a mission focused on promoting the leading candidates, lobbying member states to support the candidates who will champion feminist ideals that include gender ideology and abortion rights.
Macky Sall and Rafael Mariano Grossi of Argentina, are not getting the same attention from member states. Two last-minute candidates, Ugandan diplomat and politician Olara Otunnu and Permanent Representative of Guyana to the U.N. and former Foreign Minister Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett, seem too little too late.
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Once a candidate emerges in the straw poll, the Security Council is expected to recommend the candidate to the General Assembly. The General Assembly then selects the Secretary-General by a majority vote. The process is expected to be completed by October.
Making the U.N. great again will require strong U.S. leadership to hopefully prevent candidates from guiding the General Assembly down the same radical road that forces nation-states to acquiesce to sexual, gender, and abortion policies pushed by progressives.
Stefano Gennarini is the vice president for Legal Studies at the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), a research institute dedicated to protecting national sovereignty and the dignity of the human person at the UN.