A woman running the UN? Costa Rican candidate urges no special treatment

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - Secretary-General of the United Nations Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Rebeca Grynspan looks on prior to a press conference ahead of the 16th UN conference on trade and development, in Geneva October 13, 2025. — AFP pic

GENEVA, Oct 14 — Rebeca Grynspan, the Costa Rican candidate to lead the United Nations, said the selection process should be carried out without discrimination or preferential treatment for women.

As UN chief Antonio Guterres’s second term draws to a close next year, calls have been mounting for the world body to finally put a woman in charge.

“If you have a process that will not discriminate against women, and we are able to get to the post of being secretary-general, we will show the world that we can live on equal terms,” said Grynspan, who heads the UN trade and development agency UNCTAD.

Since its founding in 1945, the UN has had no women and only one Latin American at the helm — Peruvian Javier Perez de Cuellar, who served between 1982 and 1991.

The names of several prominent women from Latin America and the Caribbean have been floated for the next UN chief.

They include former Chilean president and former UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet, Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados, and Mexican Environment Minister Alicia Barcena.

“All of them have wonderful CVs... and none of us need any special treatment,” Grynspan said.

“What we don’t want is discrimination... in setting the agenda of who will be the next secretary-general,” she told AFP in an interview a few days after Costa Rica’s government presented her candidacy.

‘Why hasn’t it happened?’ 

The former Costa Rican vice president pushed back against demands that there “has to be” a woman UN chief.

“The question is: why hasn’t it happened with so many capable women around?” she asked.

The 69-year-old economist, who in 2021 became the first woman ever to lead UNCTAD, insisted that she had the credentials to head the UN as a whole.

“To have been able to overcome so many obstacles has made me very resilient and perseverant,” she said.

“That is a good quality for being a UN SG.”

Grynspan said she would temporarily hand over the UNCTAD reins, likely to her deputy, once her campaign for the top UN post begins in earnest in the coming months.

She has led UNCTAD as the world faces significant challenges to international trade, brought on by climate change and the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.

‘Tool for peace’ 

She was notably tasked with negotiating the so-called Black Sea Initiative for the UN in 2022, seeking to facilitate the export of tens of millions of tonnes of Ukrainian grain amid Russia’s full-scale invasion, in a bid to stave off a global food security crisis.

“Trade can be a tool for peace and a tool for diplomacy — I really believe so,” Grynspan said.

The towering tariffs unleashed by US President Donald Trump on countries around the world have complicated her task further.

“There has been a tectonic shift in the way that the trade system behaves,” she warned, adding that a major UNCTAD conference scheduled for next week would be taking place at “a critical time for global trade and for multilateralism”.

“It will be very difficult to go to the past,” she said, insisting on the need to stabilise the rules of global trade.

“We need the US and China to really continue on a negotiated path,” she said, warning that a full-blown trade war between the world’s biggest economies would have dire global consequences.

She stressed the need “to try to protect the vulnerable countries”, pointing out that there have been “higher tariffs in many vulnerable countries than in the developed world”. — AFP