Former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet ends bid to be the primary lady to guide the United Nations.
Printed On 20 Sep 2026
Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has withdrawn from the race to change into the following United Nations secretary-general, ending her bid to change into the primary lady to guide the world physique in its 80-year historical past.
Bachelet, 74, introduced her determination on Saturday in a video posted on Instagram. “In the present day I introduced that I’ve determined to not proceed with my candidacy for the place of Secretary-Normal of the United Nations,” she stated.
Beneficial Tales
checklist of three gadgetsfinish of checklist
She added that she didn’t remorse “having taken on this nice problem” even when “the time was not proper” for the form of candidacy she had sought to signify.
Her withdrawal comes after the UN Safety Council launched the third casual straw ballot, held on Friday, through which she acquired only one “encourage” vote, 11 “discourage” votes and three “no opinion” votes, in contrast with six encouraging votes in July and two in August.
The identical ballot put Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan, at the moment head of the UN’s Commerce and Improvement physique, within the lead with 9 encouraging votes, intently adopted by Guyana’s Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett with eight.
Different candidates nonetheless within the operating embrace the Worldwide Atomic Power Company’s Rafael Grossi, former Senegalese President Macky Sall and Ecuadorian diplomat Maria Fernanda Espinosa.
To be really helpful by the Safety Council, a candidate wants no less than 9 of its 15 members to vote in favour and should keep away from a veto from any of the 5 everlasting members – China, France, Russia, the UK and the US – earlier than a last vote within the Normal Meeting.
Bachelet was nominated by Chile in February with backing from Brazil and Mexico. Just one Latin American, Peru’s Javier Perez de Cuellar, has ever held the UN’s prime job, and an unofficial rotation amongst areas had put Latin America in line for this cycle.
Whoever succeeds Antonio Guterres, the present secretary-general, whose time period ends on December 31, will take cost of an organisation grappling with dynamic crises.
Guterres warned member states earlier this 12 months that the UN confronted “imminent monetary collapse”, with $1.57bn in unpaid dues piled up by the top of 2025 and solely a fraction of nations absolutely paid up.
World leaders converge on New York subsequent week for the Normal Meeting’s annual high-level session, opening Tuesday below the theme “Restoring Belief, Managing Transformation”.
Guterres warned that geopolitical divides amongst main powers – a few of whom “themselves violate worldwide regulation and sit within the Safety Council” – have left the physique deadlocked on Gaza, Ukraine and different crises, a dysfunction the still-unresolved race to succeed him will do little to repair by itself.
