Rebeca Grynspan has remained the leading candidate in the latest informal Security Council poll to choose the next United Nations secretary-general, but the result has not produced a candidate the Council can recommend for appointment.
The sixth straw poll, held on 16 October, put Costa Rica’s Grynspan on nine “encourage” votes out of the Council’s 15 members. That was one more than Guyana’s Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett and Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, who each received eight. It is a narrow lead, not a decision: the confidential ballot also indicated that Grynspan faced two “discourage” votes from permanent members.
A threshold met, but not the crucial test
The distinction is central to how the selection works. A prospective nominee normally needs at least nine favourable votes in the Security Council and must avoid opposition from any of its five permanent members — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — before the Council can make its formal recommendation. The General Assembly then appoints the secretary-general on that recommendation.
Grynspan appears to have met the numerical threshold for support, but not the permanent-member test. The reported result was five “discourage” votes, two of them cast by permanent members, alongside one “no opinion” vote. The permanent-member objections therefore prevent the nine favourable votes from being treated as a settled path to the office.
The sixth round was the first in this contest to use differently coloured ballots for permanent and elected Council members. The change does not reveal which country cast any particular vote. It does, however, show candidates whether resistance comes from a member with veto power. In a formal recommendation, such opposition is decisive; in an informal straw poll, it is a warning that can still be withdrawn in a later round.
A private ballot with a limited public record
The Council president confirmed that the sixth round had taken place and said candidates would be informed through the representatives of the states that nominated them. The president of the General Assembly was also due to be notified that the poll had been conducted. The Council does not issue an official public scorecard for these informal ballots, so the reported figures should not be represented as a formal UN tally or as a guarantee of the eventual outcome.
That confidentiality explains why the process can move quickly once a consensus starts to form, but it also makes the colour-coded round significant. The three leading candidates are now known to face the same reported number of permanent-member “discourage” votes. Rodrigues Birkett and Grossi must gain at least one additional favourable vote as well as resolve those objections. Grynspan, by contrast, has the vote total but faces the same permanent-member barrier.
The remaining four contenders are also reported to have attracted at least one permanent-member “discourage” vote. No contender therefore emerged from the sixth poll with a clean route to recommendation. The result leaves the Council divided rather than identifying a nominee for the wider membership to consider.
Time pressure on the selection
António Guterres’ second five-year term ends on 31 December, with the next secretary-general scheduled to take office on 1 January 2027. The timetable gives the Council a strong reason to convert the informal testing of candidates into an agreed recommendation, while still allowing the General Assembly time for its own formal role.
Seven candidates were still in the contest at the time of the vote. Their field includes nominees from Latin America and the Caribbean as well as Africa. Regional rotation is an established political practice rather than a binding rule, but it has added weight to arguments that the next secretary-general should come from Latin America and the Caribbean. Grynspan, Rodrigues Birkett and Grossi are all from that region.
The immediate question is not who topped one private ballot, but whether any candidate can turn tentative support into agreement among all five permanent members. Until that happens, the poll leaves Grynspan ahead on the reported count but no closer to appointment than the Council’s divisions allow.
