The United Nation’s new Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, yesterday announced that he will be appointing Nigeria’s minister of environment, Ms. Amina Mohammed, as the UN’s Deputy Secretary-General. She will be succeeding Sweden’s Jan Eliasson, whose term will expire when the global body’s change of leadership takes place in January 2017.
Thursday’s announcement, made on behalf of Mr. Guterres by the Secretary-General’s spokesman, Stephan Dujarric, came days after he was keen on making appointments reflecting gender parity. Ms. Mohammed will be working alongside two other women, in what Mr. Guterres called “the foundation” of his team. The other appointees, Luiza Ribeiro Viotti of Brazil and Kyung-Wha Kang of South Korea, will be serving as Chef de Cabinet and Special Advisor on Policy respectively. The three were chosen for “their strong backgrounds in global affairs, development diplomacy, human rights and humanitarian action”, the statement from the Secretary-General Designate read.
Amina Mohammed was Special Adviser to the outgoing UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, on post-2015 development planning. She had the challenge of bridging the differing positions of the developed countries and underdeveloped nations on the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). Her success in bringing 192 nations to sign up to the SDGs probably influenced the decision to appoint her as Deputy Secretary-General.