Fifty Years at the Table: What Small Nations Need from the Next UN Secretary-General

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VICTORIA, Seychelles, Oct 28 2026 (IPS) -On 21 September 1976, less than 3 months after self-reliance, Seychelles took its seat in the General Assembly of the United Nations. We ended up being the 145th member of the Organisation. For a young country of spread islands in the Indian Ocean, with a little population and no army to mention, it was even more than an event. It was a guarantee that, in the household of countries, size would not choose whose voice was heard.

Fifty years later on, I still think in that pledge. I likewise understand that it has actually never ever been kept immediately. It needs to be restored by every generation of leaders, and it now deals with among its hardest tests.

On 24 October, the United Nations marked its 81st anniversary. In his last United Nations Day message as Secretary-General, António Guterres advised the world that the UN is not just an organisation however a concept: that humankind’s future depends upon our capability to interact to advance peace, advancement and human rights.

Those words land at a sobering minute. Wars continue in a number of areas, typically with civilians paying the greatest rate. The environment crisis is speeding up much faster than our actions to it. Inequality is expanding within and in between countries. New innovations are advancing faster than our capability to govern them. And the UN itself is under extreme monetary stress, while its Security Council is frequently paralysed by the really powers delegated with keeping the peace.

It remains in this environment that the Security Council is now pondering, through its personal straw surveys, on who need to end up being the tenth Secretary-General when Mr Guterres’s term ends on 31 December. For little island states, it matters more than many people understand.

Why should a little island care so deeply about who leads the United Nations? Due to the fact that for countries like ours, multilateralism is not a matter of choice. It refers survival.

We will never ever be the biggest economies or the greatest military powers. Our security has actually constantly been the guideline of law, the strength of collaboration and a seat at the table where every country, big or little, has one vote. When the guidelines hold, a country of simply over 100,000 individuals can stand next to a country of a billion and be heard. When the guidelines damage, the little are the very first to be brushed aside.

The UN has actually provided little states a few of their biggest accomplishments. The Law of the Sea offered island countries sovereign rights over large ocean areas. The Paris Agreement set the objective of restricting warming to 1.5 degrees, a line that little islands battled difficult to draw. And in January this year, the High Seas Treaty participated in force, bringing almost 2 thirds of the world’s ocean, for too long a lawless frontier, under a structure for preservation and shared advantage. None of these would have been possible without the client, frequently aggravating, work of multilateral diplomacy.

I will not pretend the system is working as it should. A Security Council created for the world of 1945 does not show the world of 2026. Africa, home to more than a quarter of the UN’s members, still has no irreversible seat. Environment financing guaranteed to susceptible countries gets here gradually, in complex kinds, and typically as loans that deepen financial obligation.

The response to an imperfect system of cooperation, nevertheless, is much better cooperation, not less.

What should the world, and particularly its smaller sized countries, ask of the next Secretary-General?

Nerve. The Secretary-General has no army and a minimal spending plan. The workplace’s biggest power is ethical authority: the determination to speak clearly to the effective, to call oppression and to stand with those who have no other platform.

Second, the capability to develop bridges. In a world divided in between competing blocs, the UN’s leader need to be relied on Washington and Beijing, in Moscow and Brussels, however likewise in Victoria, Suva and Port Louis. Little states, which can not pay for irreversible opponents, comprehend this much better than many.

Third, a dedication to put the environment and the ocean at the centre of worldwide security. For island countries, increasing seas, coral collapse and severe storms are not far-off ecological problems. They are risks to our presence. In October, the International Union for Conservation of Nature alerted that 96 percent of the world’s shallow-water reef communities deal with a very high threat of collapse by 2075. Here in Seychelles, October storms have actually advised us how vulnerable our shorelines and neighborhoods are. The next Secretary-General should deal with the health of the ocean as the structure of peace, food security and success, and need to make sure that the High Seas Treaty moves rapidly from text to action as its very first Conference of the Parties methods.

4th, reform that individuals can feel. That suggests more than reorganising departments in New York. It needs to suggest a fairer Security Council, a monetary architecture that rewards durability rather of penalizing vulnerability, and a UN that provides on the ground, where households, farmers and fishers live.

There is likewise a concern of history. In 81 years, the United Nations has actually never ever been led by a female. Without favouring any prospect, I think it is time for the Organisation to reveal, at its greatest level, the equality it appropriately asks of its members.

Fifty years back, Seychelles concerned the United Nations as one of its tiniest members, filled with hope. We came due to the fact that our companied believe that the ocean which surrounds us links us to the world instead of separating us from it. That belief has actually not altered.

The next Secretary-General will acquire a divided world and a tired organization. They will likewise acquire the most crucial concept humankind has actually ever concurred upon: that our future is shared, and that no country, nevertheless little, must face it alone.

Discussion over department. Cooperation over conflict. Uniformity over worry. Those words should have to be more than a message for one day in October. They ought to be the test of the next 10 years.

James Alix Michel is a previous President of Seychelles, a Blue Economy leader and a champ of ocean defense.

IPS UN Bureau