The First Female UN Chief Must Put Women at the Peace Table

Opinion by Indai Sajor and Tamao Chika

The United Nations Security Council’s most recent straw poll, held on Oct. 16, showed both a possible breakthrough and the old order’s power to block it. Rebeca Grynspan of Costa Rica led the sixth informal ballot to select the next secretary-general, receiving nine votes of encouragement.

Yet two of the five permanent members registered discouraging votes against her. Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett of Guyana and Rafael Grossi of Argentina each received eight votes of encouragement while also facing two negative votes from permanent members. For the first time in this selection round, color-coded ballots revealed how the veto-wielding powers had voted.

The political uncertainty has deepened with the entry of another woman, Lana Nusseibeh of the United Arab Emirates, whose candidacy was submitted on Oct. 21. The General Assembly held a public dialogue with her on Oct. 27. As the Security Council aims to agree on a successor to António Guterres, whose term ends on Dec. 31, the world’s most powerful governments must confront a question that should have been settled long ago: Will the UN, founded on the equal rights of women and men, finally entrust its highest office to a woman?

In the UN’s 81 years, all nine secretaries-general have been men. It is a measure of the distance between the UN’s declared principles and the distribution of authority within the institution itself. The selection of the first woman secretary-general would be an overdue act of institutional justice. But breaking the glass ceiling must not be mistaken for transforming the building beneath it. A woman’s appointment will be historic; whether her leadership is feminist will be determined by what she does with power.

The first woman secretary-general must make an explicit, public and measurable commitment to gender equality and gender justice, particularly through the women, peace and security agenda and the proposed treaty on crimes against humanity. Oct. 31 marks 26 years since the Security Council adopted Resolution 1325, which was the first such text to call for women’s full participation in peace processes. The appointment of the next UN leader should open a period of accountability, not close a campaign for representation.

The scale of exclusion is indefensible. According to the secretary-general’s latest report on women, peace and security, women represented just five percent of negotiators across 57 peace processes in 2025, down from seven percent in 2024. A UN that repeatedly endorses women’s meaningful participation cannot accept peace tables at which they are nearly absent.

Near silence on WPS

So far, the candidates have said little about the agenda, and it came up mostly when civil society raised it in the nominees’ individual General Assembly dialogues. Rodrigues Birkett pledged to implement the Council’s resolutions, and María Fernanda Espinosa, a candidate endorsed by Antigua and Barbuda, called the agenda “absolutely central” when she was asked about it.

Ivonne A-Baki, who is backed by Tonga, called the exclusion of Afghan women unacceptable but offered no specific steps to remedy the problem, and Olara Otunnu, a nominee of Uganda, cited his record protecting women and children in war. Grossi rejected a dedicated UN envoy for the agenda, and Grynspan did not mention it, according to 1 for 8 Billion’s candidate profiles.

In the Assembly dialogue with Nusseibeh, she said women should be “a key part of mediation efforts for peace,” but when Sudan asked her about mass rapes by the Rapid Support Forces, which the UAE is accused of backing, she referred the question to her government.

The next secretary-general should ensure that women help set the agenda, draft agreements, negotiate power-sharing and security arrangements and oversee their implementation. The secretary-general should require each special envoy and mediator to publish participation benchmarks and explain failures to meet them, aim for parity and treat an initial one-third representation as a floor, not an endpoint. Women’s peace organizations need direct, flexible and sustained financing, not brief project grants that abruptly end when international attention moves elsewhere.

Women cannot be invited to sit at a table where the only questions are ceasefire lines and the division of ministries. They must be able to challenge the conditions that reproduce war: Militarized masculinities, arms proliferation, land dispossession, economic deprivation, climate insecurity and the normalization of violence against women.

A new treaty

The proposed Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity presents another defining test. In December 2024, the General Assembly moved toward negotiating a legally binding convention. Its preparatory committee met in January 2026 and is due to resume from April 12 to 15 next year. Diplomatic conferences are planned for 2028 and 2029.

The treaty is not yet concluded; this is precisely why feminist intervention now matters. The 2019 International Law Commission draft articles already provide a substantial foundation. Their definition of crimes against humanity includes rape, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy and other sexual violence, as well as persecution on gender grounds.

A recent UN Department of Peace Operations symposium convened women activists and international legal experts to address criminalization, prosecution, international cooperation and the rights of victims. Crucially, crimes against humanity do not require a nexus to armed conflict. But the new convention must reflect the full continuum of violence that women experience and anticipate forms of organized oppression that current categories inadequately name.

The secretary-general cannot dictate the final text of a state-negotiated convention or force Security Council members to yield their vetoes. She can, however, define the UN’s moral and political direction, mobilize the Secretariat’s expertise, defend open civic participation, use her good offices and publicly report on whether states are meeting their commitments.

Before being appointed, every serious candidate, especially one seeking to become the first woman to hold the office, should make three significant commitments:

Make gender justice and the women, peace and security agenda core measures of UN leadership, with public benchmarks, budget transparency and accountability across peace, humanitarian, development and human rights work.

Champion an inclusive, survivor-centered crimes against humanity treaty that supports rigorous gender analysis, recognizes sexual violence and reproductive harms and builds strong mechanisms for national prosecution and international cooperation.

Renew the UN’s commitment to accountability for conflict-related sexual violence and win member states’ support for monitoring frameworks that treat justice as a core part of the WPS implementation.

The first woman secretary-general must not merely become the face of progress. She must help make progress enforceable.

Note: the Article was published in passblue.com

Caurtsy: passblue.com