5 min readOct 21, 2026 02:45 PM IST First published on: Oct 21, 2026 at 02:45 PM ISTSwedish economist and diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld, who became the youngest UN Secretary-General in 1953 at 47, boarded a plane for Ndola, in present-day Zambia, to negotiate an end to the fighting in Congo. He never reached his destination because his plane crashed on September 17, 1961. Hammarskjöld’s death immortalised a vision of the UNSG: Not a ceremonial custodian of an imperfect institution, but an independent diplomat willing to place moral authority, even at the expense of his own life, between nations and war. More than six decades later, as the UN prepares to choose its 10th secretary-general, that vision has rarely been more necessary or more endangered.The world experienced 65 state-based conflicts across 35 countries in 2025, the highest since 1946. Meanwhile, AI is transforming security and economic power faster than governments can establish safeguards, climate commitments remain dangerously inadequate, and the UN is constrained by institutions designed for 1945. Choosing António Guterres’s successor is not another diplomatic rotation; it is a decision about whether the UN will continue managing the consequences of global disorder or begin confronting its causes. Candidates should be evaluated against four urgent tests: Governing AI, enforcing climate accountability, revitalising preventive diplomacy and reforming the institution itself.AdvertisementFrom accelerating scientific discovery to improving public services, AI’s benefits could be enormous. The same technology can produce sophisticated disinformation, automate cyberattacks, intensify surveillance and reduce human control over military decisions. Access is profoundly unequal. In 2025, 6 billion people used the internet, while 2.2 billion remained offline. Fifth-generation mobile networks reached 84 per cent of people in high-income countries but only 4 per cent in low-income economies. An AI revolution built upon such disparities could deepen the division between countries that design the future and those compelled merely to consume it.Also Read | Harvesting the Sun, and powering the farmThe UN has taken an important first step by creating a 40-member Independent International Scientific Panel on AI. A scientific body, however, cannot substitute for political rules. The next secretary-general should pursue a narrow but enforceable global baseline: Mandatory safety evaluations for high-risk systems, disclosure of serious AI incidents, reliable identification of synthetic media and meaningful human control over decisions involving lethal force. It is not an attempt to regulate every algorithm from New York, but to be analogous to international aviation standards: Preserving national innovation while establishing minimum protections against risks that do not respect borders.Climate change is not about the absence of agreements, but an absence of delivery. 2024 was the warmest year, averaging about 1.55 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and an unmistakable warning. Even full implementation of current national pledges would place the world on course for approximately 2.3- 2.5 degrees of warming this century; policies already in force point toward as much as 2.8 degrees. Diplomacy has produced promises, communiqués and annual summits. Atmospheric physics remains unimpressed.AdvertisementThe next secretary-general cannot compel governments to reduce emissions but can expose the distance between rhetoric and action through country-level assessments of emissions, adaptation and financing. High-level climate meetings should become implementation reviews rather than recurring stages for recycled pledges. Developing countries may need between $310-365 billion annually for adaptation by 2035. International public adaptation finance reached only $26 billion in 2023. For vulnerable countries, climate finance is not charity. It is partial restitution for a crisis they did not create.War remains the institution’s most immediate test. Modern conflicts are increasingly internationalised, technologically enabled and entangled with rival great powers. By the time the Security Council considers many crises, positions have hardened, civilians have fled, and mediation has become far more difficult. A permanent UN mediation corps should be established, drawing on diplomats, regional specialists, ceasefire negotiators and experts in humanitarian access. It should deploy when tensions begin rising. Discreet diplomacy supported by international legitimacy could prevent local disputes from acquiring regional consequences. The UNSG possesses an underused instrument. Article 99 of the UN Charter allows the officeholder to bring threats to international peace directly before the Security Council. Exercised judiciously, that can force governments to confront dangers they would prefer to ignore.Ultimately, leadership cannot compensate indefinitely for structural obsolescence. The Security Council still reserves permanent membership and veto power for five states reflecting the settlement of World War II. Africa’s 54 countries constitute approximately 28 per cent of UN membership, yet the continent has no permanent seat. Such exclusion weakens the legitimacy of decisions the UN expects the world to obey.you may likeThe next secretary-general cannot rewrite the Charter, but reform need not wait for unanimity among powerful states. The office can reduce duplication among agencies, disclose performance failures, strengthen independent evaluation and redirect resources from administrative machinery toward prevention and field operations. Institutional expansion without accountability would merely construct a larger bureaucracy.Hammarskjöld’s final journey embodied the belief that diplomacy must sometimes venture toward danger rather than wait for catastrophe to arrive. The next secretary-general need not imitate his sacrifice. But the office must recover his sense of purpose. A world of autonomous weapons, climatic upheaval and proliferating wars cannot afford a secretary-general selected merely because no major power finds the candidate objectionable. It requires one who will find it impossible to ignore indifference, paralysis and injustice and be more results-oriented as opposed to statement-oriented.The writer is Chairman of IPAG India, a Dhaka-based international think tank