Secretary-General

The Secretary-General is described by the Charter as the «chief administrative officer» of the Organization. The Secretary-General is, of course, much more than that. Equal parts diplomat and activist, conciliator and provocateur, the Secretary-General stands before the world community as the very emblem of the United Nations. The task demands great vigour, sensitivity and imagination, to which the Secretary-General must add a tenacious sense of optimism — a belief that the ideals expressed in the Charter can be made a reality.

The work of the Secretary-General involves a certain degree of inherent creative tension that stems from the Charter's definition of the job. The Charter empowers him to bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which, in his opinion, threatens international peace and security. It also calls upon him to perform «such other functions» as are entrusted to him by the Security Council, the General Assembly and the other main United Nations organs. Thus the Secretary-General functions as both spokesperson for the international community and servant of the Member State — roles that would seem to guarantee some amount of friction. Far from constricting his work, however, these broad outlines grant the Secretary-General an extraordinary mandate for action. (1)

The Secretary-General is best known to the general public for using his stature and impartiality — his «good offices» (2) — in the interests of «preventive diplomacy» (3). This refers to steps taken by the Secretary-General or his senior staff, publicly and in private, to prevent international disputes from arising, escalating or spreading. Indeed, as events and crises unfold across the globe, the Secretary-General's words and deeds can have profound impact.

But his work also entails routine daily consultations with world leaders and other individuals, attendance at sessions of various United Nations bodies, and worldwide travel as part of the overall effort to improve the state of affairs. Each year, the Secretary-General issues a report in which he appraises the work of the Organization and advances his view of its future priorities. (Based on Basic Facts about the United Nations. New York: United Nations, 1995).

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Here is a list of the distinguished persons who were UN Secretaries-General:

1. Trygve Lie, of Norway, who held office from 1946 to 1953;

2. Dag Hammaraskjold, of Sweden, who served from 1953 until his death in a plane crash in Africa in 1961;

3. U Thant, of Burma (now Myanmar), who served from 1961 to 1971;

4. Kurt Waldheim, of Austria, who held office from 1972 to 1981;

5. Javier Perez de Cuellar, of Peru, who served from 1982 to 1991;

6. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, of Egypt, who held office from 1992 to 1996;

7. Cofi Annan, of Ghana, took office in 1997. His efforts to revitalize the UN were crowned by the Nobel Peace Prize jointly awarded to the United Nations and its Secretary-General in 2001;

8. Ban Ki Moon, who took office in 2007.

Notes

1. The "far from+gerund" construction, placed at the beginning of a sentence, means "rather than", "instead of", "the opposite of". It might be useful to remember two ways of translating such phrases: а. "вместо того чтобы...", б. "не только не..., но наоборот...".

2. See the definition of the term in UN Glossary at the end of the manual.

3. See the explanation of the term in UN Glossary at the end of the manual.

Exercise 38. Do you know that for its performance in the area of peace the UN has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize nine times in its history? Here is a piece borrowed from an article published in the editorial section of the Wall Street Journal. Translate the article into Russian. Say whether you agree with the ideas contained in the last paragraph.