The World’s Toughest Job

Harold Weston, Building the United Nations--#3--South End General Assembly, 1951. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Committee of the Weston United Nations Paintings, 1955.

Welcome to [Re]Group, a platform for ideas, debate, and solutions for the future of global cooperation in turbulent times.

At a time when the world urgently needs new ideas, strategies, partnerships, and leadership, we are focusing on the race to become the next United Nations Secretary-General — what we are calling “the world’s toughest job.”

Throughout 2026, [Re]Group will offer everything you need to stay up to date with a selection process that makes a papal conclave look speedy, structured, and easy to decode. We will also cover the transition as a new Secretary-General prepares to start work on January 1, 2027.

But our primary focus is not the horse race. Instead, we will explore what will be in the new Secretary-General’s inbox and how they can implement a playbook for a new generation of multilateral cooperation.

[Re]Group is an initiative of the United Nations Foundation, but it is designed to be a platform for an open conversation on how to reimagine multilateral cooperation for a better world.

We invite you to think with us, both online and in the real world. It is time to [Re]Group. Join us.

Decoding the Race

Seventy-three years ago, the first United Nations Secretary-General, the Norwegian Trygve Lie, welcomed his Swedish successor, Dag Hammarskjöld, to New York with a grim handshake and a single sentence: “You are about to take over the most impossible job on Earth.”

So far, nine men (ahem) have held a job that the UN Charter describes as “the chief administrative officer of the Organization,” but which many believe comes with the power to change the world.

The first challenge is to navigate the gauntlet of a selection process that is governed by a few rules, some unwritten customs, and the hard reality of geopolitical power. Historically, this is a race that favors stealth campaigns, diplomatic discretion, and the ability to avoid a veto from the five permanent members of the Security Council.

As candidates (at least those who have already announced) make their first public pitch for the job, our Ultimate Cheat Sheet offers you rolling updates on contenders, milestones, and the nuts and bolts of the process, while our multimedia Decoded series takes you deep inside what it takes to land — and survive — the role.

You cannot understand the United Nations without understanding the past, so we look back at the election of past Secretaries-General, from the man who thought his selection was an “April Fool’s joke” to the veto battles that have been fought in the Security Council.

World’s Toughest Job Podcast

On April 28, we will launch a podcast series with Foreign Policy. The “World’s Toughest Job” will explore the challenges facing the next UN leader through immersive storytelling and voices from around the globe.

Confronting the Multilateralist’s Paradox

A new Secretary-General will be chosen at a pivotal moment for the UN and the wider international system — as the world faces yet another global emergency.

Multilateralism is undoubtedly experiencing an existential crisis. The UN’s basic value proposition is up for grabs. Its capacity to act is often degraded. Gridlock is normal in the Security Council and elsewhere, and traditional champions of the global order can no longer be relied upon.

But as UN Foundation President and CEO Elizabeth Cousens argues in her opening essays (part 1, part 2), the crisis we face isn’t a lack of demand for global cooperation; it is a crisis of supply.

In a world of cascading shocks and uncontrolled competition, States are urgently seeking new ways to hedge against geopolitical and geoeconomic risk, but are often not getting what they need from traditional international institutions.

The paradox facing the next UN chief isn’t that they are taking over an irrelevant institution — it’s that they are taking over one that risks being “overwhelmed or sidelined by demand it cannot supply.”

From Dag Hammarskjöld’s invention of peacekeeping on the fly to U Thant’s quiet, world-saving diplomacy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a savvy Secretary-General has more space for political creativity than people assume. They just need to find a way to exploit it.

Just. A lot rests on that word. To investigate where the UN can create the most value for countries and for people, [Re]Group is exploring eight mission-critical areas that will be in the Secretary-General’s inbox.

From reviving the lost art of peacemaking and navigating the frontier of AI governance, to reclaiming moral leadership in a fractured world, this series explores what a “Minimal Viable Product” of global order could look like, while simultaneously searching for a path to higher ambition.

Building a Playbook

Having defined what needs to be done, the next question is how.

A new Secretary-General will find that money is tight, but focus can be their new currency. With more than $60 billion flowing through the UN system, a canny “chief administrative officer” can find new ways of undertaking missions that are truly critical.

That means making the UN the ultimate platform for problem-solving; bringing together high-ambition coalitions of governments, the private sector, and civil society; acting as a convener and conductor; and using shared goals to actually drive delivery.

Throughout the year, we will be building a rolling open-source playbook of models for renewed cooperation, outlining strategies and plans with the greatest potential to command sustained political and financial support, and to deliver both immediate results and a boost to our collective ability to think, plan, and act for the future at a global scale.

If nothing else, our current global disruptions should decisively liberate us from incremental thinking. We don’t have all the answers yet. But when no one really knows what to do, the best thing is not to stand down, but to try and find out.

---