|
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- Bulgaria's Kristalina Georgieva, the latest candidate to enter the contest for the next secretary-general of the United Nations, on Monday went through a public grilling by members of the UN General Assembly.
Georgieva, an economist and diplomat, only threw her hat in the ring last week, joining eight others, including Irina Bokova, also of Bulgaria, but who has not been doing well in the informal "straw polls" conducted among members of the UN Security Council. Antonio Guterres, former prime minister of Portugal and former head of the UN Refugee Agency, has been holding a substantial lead in the race.
The "informal dialogue" is a two-hour interview by members of the assembly, mostly representing various groups in the 193-member UN body, a few independent states and even some civil organizations. It is a new process, for candidates for the post, introduced during the previous session of the General Assembly in a bid to make the selection process transparent.
Georgieva is expected to be tested for the first time in the next straw poll, a secret and informal vote, by the Security Council, the sixth one scheduled for Wednesday.
The UN Charter says only the 15-member council shall recommend its choice of candidate to the General Assembly for secretary-general. It is a five-year position normally limited to two terms.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is retiring Dec. 31 after two terms.
During her interview, Georgieva emphasized multilateralism and "the need to build political will so we can have the alliances locally and globally to turn the tides on conflict. Conflict prevention has to become an overwhelming priority."
And during conflicts, she said, "It is unforgivable that when people who are risking their lives to save the lives of others that international law is trampled over in so many places," an apparent reference to violence directed against humanitarian aid convoys, particularly in Syria.
A former World Bank vice president, Georgieva, 63, expressed concern for refugees.
"As a European, I would start by saying, it was for us the refugee convention was actually adopted," she said. "It was for us the High Commissioner for Refugees took office. We were the refugees and we all need to understand that in this fragile world of ours there is no guarantee for anyone that we would not become refugees again."
"I think that for us to have a strong voice on understanding that helping people pushed out of their homes, displaced forcefully by conflict or a natural disaster is not only morally right, it is in all our interests," Georgieva said, her voice almost choking on the word "morally." "But, also recognize that the increase of displaced populations is so dramatic that it has created a situation that we as a global community have to reassess."
"No more we can only worry about taking care of people temporarily, with these protracted displacements we have to worry about creating opportunities for refugees to be integrated and not to forget that 85 percent go from one poor country to another," she said. "It's a matter of moral responsibility, resource allocation and reassessing the nature of the problem so we can actually deal with the root causes of displacement more seriously and deal with the impact of displacement more responsibly."
Georgieva thought that perhaps xenophobia has arisen in some Eastern European countries because many of those same countries had been isolated during the Cold War from the diversity Western Europe has experienced.
Then she had some advice on what seems a perennial problem.
"On young people I have been thinking about the importance of focusing on youth," Georgieva told assembly members. "We often say the youth is our future. Well they are present. This is our presence as well. They're here."
