By Solomon "Customs" Bridges
NEW YORK — The race to become the next United Nations secretary-general has produced a surprise front-runner: Rebeca Grynspan, a Costa Rican economist and former vice-president whose parents fled Poland as Holocaust refugees and settled in Central America.
Grynspan currently heads the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the body that has, according to the Guardian, compiled extensive accounting of the economic toll of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories. She is described as a continuity candidate, carrying what the Guardian reports is tacit support from outgoing Secretary-General António Guterres.
If selected, Grynspan would become the first woman to lead the United Nations in the organization's 81-year history — a milestone that has eluded a string of prior campaigns by female candidates.
The Guardian's account, the sole source for this report, does not detail the formal selection timeline, the full slate of rival candidates, or the positions of the Security Council's five permanent members, whose support is required under UN practice for any nominee to advance to the General Assembly for confirmation. Those details matter: the secretary-general is chosen through closed-door negotiations among the P5 — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France — any one of which can quietly veto a candidate before a vote is ever taken.
For a body that speaks for 193 member states but answers first to five, the identity of its next leader will shape how the UN handles everything from Gaza's humanitarian accounting to the next pandemic response. A Costa Rican woman at that podium would be new. What she'd be permitted to say from it is the older, harder question.
— Nothing happens 'over there' anymore.
— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian.
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