Guyana UN candidate calls maintaining UN 'collective responsibility'

June 18 - Guyana's candidate to be United Nations secretary-general said on Thursday there is a collective responsibility to ensure the world body can continue to act as a force for good, while stressing the need to make it more agile and effective.

Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, a former schoolteacher who currently serves as her country's U.N. ambassador and was previously its foreign minister, is among six candidates to succeed Antonio Guterres as U.N. chief after his term expires at the end of the year.

Guterres’ successor faces the enormous task of revitalizing an organization in crisis and declining stature that is under increasing pressure to reform a bloated, costly bureaucracy and cut duplication across its many agencies.

"I believe in the United Nations. It is indispensable, it is incomparable, and it is a force for global good," Rodrigues-Birkett told a hearing on her candidacy.

"While it is important to highlight the U.N.'s shortcomings, we must also recognize the profound difference it has made in the lives of all of our peoples. Our collective responsibility is to make sure it continues to do so."

Like other candidates, she stressed the need to continue efforts to reform the organization "towards the goal of a more agile and effective organization."

The other candidates are Maria Fernanda Espinosa, a former foreign affairs minister and defense minister of Ecuador; Rebeca Grynspan, a former vice president of Costa Rica; Michelle Bachelet, the former Chilean president; Macky Sall, a former president of Senegal, and Rafael Grossi of Argentina, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Elections are due later this year. No woman has ever held the job.

Precedent holds that a secretary-general should not come from one of the permanent members of the Security Council - Britain, China, France, Russia and the U.S. - although the major powers' backing is crucial in a lengthy and arcane selection process. REUTERS