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New Zealander aims for top U.N. post

Former prime minister 1 of 8 applicants, 4 of whom are women

By Emma O’Brien and Kambiz Foroohar, Emma O’Brien and Kambiz Foroohar, Bloomberg
Published: April 5, 2016, 6:45pm

Helen Clark, the New Zealand leader who refused U.S. calls to send troops to Iraq, said she will run for secretary-general of the United Nations amid a global campaign to elect a woman to the world’s top diplomatic post.

Clark, 66, became the eighth candidate and fourth woman to be nominated to succeed Ban Ki-moon, who will finish his term later this year. The first female elected prime minister of New Zealand, Clark led the country for nine years before becoming the first woman to helm the U.N. Development Programme, which administers the global body’s poverty eradication program, in 2009.

“I know how to build consensus on issues,” Clark said at a press conference Monday in New York, which ended with New Zealand diplomats serenading reporters in Maori, the language of the indigenous people of the South Pacific country. “The U.N. has many tools in its tool kit and they all have to be utilized for a more peaceful and inclusive society.”

The secretary-general position has been an exclusively male bastion since the U.N. was created after World War II. The next leader will be decided in a new process aimed at introducing greater transparency. The applicants will, for the first time, attend informal meetings with the UN’s 193 nations before the 15-member Security Council recommends a candidate to the General Assembly.

A core group of U.N. member states supports the bid for a woman to be nominated, said Jean Krasno, a lecturer at the City College of New York’s Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership.

The Security Council — which includes the permanent five members of China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — will start candidate discussions in July. New Zealand is a nonpermanent member of the council.

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