This is the second of two pieces mapping three of these pathways. It outlines processes to confront gridlock through the U.N. Secretariat, where the U.N. secretary-general’s personal power and delegation capacity can move humanitarian aid, provide information and support political processes in the absence of clear political resolutions. The previous piece in this series examined processes through the General Assembly, which target the UNSC’s legitimacy and underwrite international justice, and processes through the UNSC, where concerned parties try to break the P5’s monopoly on leadership and information using procedural and practical innovations.

The Secretary-General’s Personal Power

The U.N. Secretariat encompasses the U.N.’s agencies and its international civil service, headed by the U.N. secretary-general. Whether because of the small number of men who have occupied the office or the nature of the office, analysts emphasize how much the UNSG’s personal attributes shape the course of multilateral action at the U.N. As Ian Johnstone writes, “with little formal authority and no material power, the SG’s influence depends largely on his persuasive powers.” How he wields this persuasive power in an institutional and normative context that he helps shape — with a legal role and interpretative power vis-à-vis international law and its implementation — make his personal willingness to act or not act globally consequential.

From Dag Hammarskjöld’s famous unsolved murder after wading into a U.S.-Soviet proxy war, to Boutros Boutros-Ghali losing a second term as secretary-general after his relationship with the United States soured, to Kofi Annan courting American disfavor after decrying its invasion of Iraq, secretaries-general have chosen divergent paths when confronted with P5 members who are running afoul of one another and, often, afoul of the charter. Ultimately, the true soft power of the office, Annan wrote, rested in convincing others that the secretary-general’s successes were in their best interests — when the UNSC was divided, then parties had to have faith in his capacity, he wrote, regardless of whether they retained faith in the U.N. system.

The larger U.N. system, in Hammarskjöld’s estimation, was what member states made it — but, within the constraints set by governments’ willingness to act and cooperate, much depended on what its independent bureaucracy chose to do, with the UNSG at its helm, setting its priorities and choosing its battles. The office grants its holder creative capacity to introduce new ideas, to take initiatives and to put before member states findings and information that might influence and guide their actions. Yet the UNSG’s willingness to intercede in gridlock at the UNSC — and to mobilize the U.N.’s agencies to act — may also depend on how much political capital he believes he has for undertaking action, and how much political capital he may want to spend elsewhere.

Current Secretary-General António Guterres, faced with a divided UNSC yet reliant on P5 support to keep the U.N. running, has taken a cautious and removed role vis-à-vis conflict resolution, orienting his work toward global goods like climate and health and away from the “good offices” mode of his position. He has encouraged the P5’s cooperation on these global goods instead of making frequent interventions in conflict processes that involve the P5. And while the U.N.’s humanitarian and aid agencies are usually a critical part of any multilateral response to crisis, the simultaneous need to protect and shepherd the larger U.N. system’s work, resources and funding, which are enormously dependent on the P5 for funding and support, can circumscribe the UNSG’s ideas about what it is politically possible for the Secretariat to do.  

But there is real space for Secretariat action even when the UNSG is reluctant to directly confront or challenge the P5. The U.N. Charter grants the UNSG the authority to mobilize its diplomatic offices and the U.N.’s humanitarian agencies in crises, with little need to consult the P5 before doing so. The first set of pathways involves simply taking action without asking the P5 for their consent, and the second set of pathways involves initially delegating peacemaking power to other actors with more independent scope for action.

Taking Independent Action

As Shamala Kandiah Thompson, Karin Landgren and Paul Romita have written, Article 99 of the U.N. Charter allows the UNSG to bring any issue he thinks may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security before the UNSC. The article gives secretaries-general “an open door to engage the Council on a broad range of threats.” The UNSG accordingly can help shape the UNSC’s agenda in meaningful ways without waiting for the P5’s consent or agreement.

Beyond an independent role in agenda-shaping, the UNSG’s role as the chief administrative officer of the organization means they can commission independent reports and studies, and, critically, coordinate humanitarian action without seeking the P5’s permission.

These measures have real impact: they help shape knowledge and debate at the Council, and they help people in crisis receive necessary aid, and neither depends on the UNSC’s willingness — merely on the UNSG’s political will. They do require the UNSG spend political capital: In his memoir, for example, Kofi Annan relates simply publicly announcing a deal between Lebanon and Israel to lift the blockade in order to generate public pressure should the blockade not get lifted — a tactic that certainly could have backfired badly. Similarly, Guterres’ Youth Climate Summit can be understood as a way of generating popular pressure on powerful states who are unwilling to take action by using the UNSG’s convening capacity.

Because the UNSG has both an interpretive role vis-à-vis international law and the ability to coordinate humanitarian action without P5 consent, there is even greater space for creative action on gridlocked humanitarian crises. Some prominent legal scholars, for example, argue the UNSG does not need UNSC approval to provide neutral-cross border humanitarian assistance in Syria — a particularly pressing issue given the Syrian government’s weaponization of U.N. aid.

Delegating Peacemaking Power

The UNSG can also confront gridlock at the UNSC by delegating peacemaking power, either to special representatives or to private organizations.

In some cases, a UNSG-appointed special representative or special envoy appointed for particularly tricky cases may have more space for political action, insulating the UNSG from politically dangerous choices while still engaging the larger Secretariat in conflict resolution. As John Karlsrud has argued, special representatives within peacekeeping missions can act as norm arbitrators and innovators in the field, generating new ideas and helping weigh conflict norms against one another while grappling with immediate, practical issues. These diplomats rely specifically on relative independence and physical distance from U.N. headquarters to do their work: their personal prestige and their relatively decentralized authority can enable them to wield influence over both the immediate conflict and larger norms of conflict resolution within the U.N. system. While crises that directly involve the P5 enough to gridlock the UNSC are systematically different from cases that receive peacekeepers, skilled special representatives to gridlocked conflicts may still have creative space to act, depending on their ability to creatively read the problem before them and intercede with solutions, and depending on their independence from the UNSG.

The Black Sea Grain Deal highlights another process of navigating gridlock at the UNSC: diplomatic efforts from NGOs, thinktanks and private industry. Hailed as a critical breakthrough in Russia’s war on Ukraine war, the deal allowed for passage of vital grain via Turkey and under joint U.N. auspices. In his in-depth account of the deal’s negotiation, Colum Lynch outlined a process in which the Geneva-based Center for Humanitarian Dialogue helped facilitate early negotiations, and then turned to the U.N. for the larger umbrella of its credibility once negotiations looked promising. This process — a smaller organization undertaking a risky negotiation, and then turning it over to the U.N. — insulated the Secretariat from the political costs of failure, and then later allowed the UNSG to claim a major political victory despite gridlock at the UNSC. Two U.N. bodies, UNCTAD and the International Maritime Organization, provided important technical information during the negotiation process — and private industry and traders with a major stake in continued trade helped drive diplomacy alongside the participating and guarantor states, particularly as Russia’s concern with fertilizer has become more central to the negotiations. While the deal remains tenuous, the process demonstrates how the UNSG can work alongside external actors to help broker important humanitarian deals even when the P5 obstruct UNSC action. 

Anjali Dayal was a 2022-2023 senior scholar in residence at the U.S. Institute of Peace and is an associate professor of international politics at Fordham University.