Adopting a consensus resolution put forward by its President, Peter Thomson, the Assembly acted on the recommendation on the UN Security Council, which on 6 October forwarded Mr. Guterres' name to the 193-member body as its nominee for UN Secretary-General for a five-year period, ending 31 December 2021.
Guterres, aged 67, was Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees from June 2005 to December 2015. He will become the world's top diplomat on 1 January 2017, and hold that post for the next five years.
Ten years to the day after his own appointment as Secretary-General, Ban said: “Secretary-General-elect Guterres is well known to all of us in the hall. But he is perhaps best known where it counts most: on the front lines of armed conflict and humanitarian suffering” referring to his time as head of the UN refugee agency.
United States Ambassador Samantha Power said that overt twice as many women were considered for this position this year than in all of the previous years, adding that, “while being a woman is not among Mr. Guterres’ many qualifications, he has pledged gender parity at all levels of the United Nations with clear benchmarks and timeframes.”
The Secretary-General Designate said that, "the true winner today is the credibility of the UN. And it also made very clear to me that as Secretary-General having been chosen by all member states, I must be at the service of them all equally and with no agenda but the one enshrined in the UN Charter.” Guterres said that over the last ten years he has witnessed first-hand the suffering of the most vulnerable people on earth.
He said, "what has happened to the dignity and worth of the human person? The dignity and worth of the human person referred in our charter. What has made us immune to the plight of those most socially and economically underprivileged? All this makes me feel the acute responsibility to make human dignity the core of my work- and I trust the core of our common work.”