Dear Editor,
Some time ago, I called Ambassador Carolyn Rodrigues and said to her we should put forward her candidacy for the Secretary General (SG) of the United Nations (UN). She laughed and said it is not up to her. On Friday night, President Irfaan Ali stepped forward with a nominee for the position of SG of the United Nations.
She is simply the best candidate for the SG of the UN at this time. Her name is Carolyn Rodrigues. And she is from Guyana. President Irfaan Ali on Friday night announced her candidacy for the post of SG of the UN when the 193 countries with voting rights at the UN will have an opportunity to elect a new candidate.
The UN is 80 years old. In over eight decades, the UN has had nine SGs. The organisation has never had a woman serving as the SG. The time is now to elect a woman. The nine SGs have come from Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin South America. There has never been a Caribbean SG. The time has come for a Caribbean citizen to serve as the SG for the UN. In fact, the time has come for the world to elect the best candidate among the nominees for the SG position.
Carolyn Rodrigues, Guyana’s nominee, fits all the above and is the best candidate, period.
There comes a time when the world must come together and do what is best for humanity. As we prepare to elect the next SG, the world needs to find a special candidate to be the UN’s SG. Carolyn Rodrigues is a special candidate, the right person at the right time.
As an Indigenous woman, she has had an exceptional career as a national and global public servant. When we served in Parliament and in the Cabinet together (she was first appointed as Minister of Amerindian Affairs in 2001 at the age of 25), she was the youngest Cabinet Member and the youngest Parliamentarian at the time.
When she became Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2008, in which she served until May 2015, Carolyn became Guyana’s first-ever woman Foreign Affairs Minister, one of only a handful of women in the world who served in such a position, and perhaps the first woman of Indigenous descent in the world to do so. She still holds a record as one of the youngest persons in the world who has ever served as a Foreign Affairs Minister.
Carolyn Rodrigues excelled as Minister of Amerindian Affairs, Minister of Foreign Affairs and as a Parliamentarian. We all remember the remarkable job she did in chairing the Special Select Committee of Parliament when she piloted the Amerindian Act through Parliament and to enactment.
Prior to being selected to be Guyana’s Permanent Representative at the UN in New York in 2020, Carolyn served as a director of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), first in Rome and then in Geneva. At the UN in NY, she successfully navigated Guyana’s election to the Security Council. In regard to non-permanent members of the Security Council, Guyana’s term in the Security Council has been ranked as one of the most influential non-permanent members’ terms. Indeed, serving twice as the President of the Security Council, Carolyn became one of the most admired PRs among those who serve in NY.
Carolyn is a special person, a special lady, a person that the UN desperately needs at a time when the UN desperately needs reinvigoration. Her journey, from Santa Rosa, a hinterland community, from being born into an Amerindian (Indigenous) family, in circumstances where education opportunities were limited and where access to food, potable water, electricity and health were limited, to one of the most important jobs in the world – she is uniquely a special person. The UN needs a candidate like Carolyn.
Many people and many countries today believe that the UN has outlived its usefulness. The UN was born out of war, and its mission in 1945 when it was established was to end wars, to promote peace and to end hunger and poverty. In 1945, the world came together as the UN to end forever “holocaust” as a human phenomenon. As the UN prepares to elect a new SG, the world has been plagued by wars and conflict (there are more than 120 conflicts ongoing presently); the threat of nuclear war has never been greater; the threat of a third world war has never been more real; “holocausts” now ring as a pathway to “peace”; and gains in ending poverty and hunger are at either a standstill or being reversed. The UN’s anti-poverty instrument – the SDGs – is seriously off-track. The threats of more pandemics, worse ones than COVID-19, are staring us in the face. The UN has never appeared more impotent.
The UN needs a special person. Guyana’s nominee, Carolyn Rodrigues, is a special person. At a time when the UN must be reengineered to be “fit for the future” and “fit for purpose”, we need a candidate like Carolyn Rodrigues. In 2025, we boldly and enthusiastically embraced the Pact of the Future, which laid the groundwork to revitalise multilateralism, turbocharge the SDGs, and adapt the UN system to 21st-century challenges, such as climate change and biodiversity threats. As the UN80 Initiative is being formulated, the most extensive UN reforms will be on the table in 2027, plans that will lead to funding cuts and the search for efficiency; we need the voices of every region in the world. Carolyn Rodrigues is the right person at the right time to mobilise the voice of the world.
CARICOM and Guyana have a chance to stand as one behind our nominee. Let us wave the Guyana flag and the CARICOM flags. The UN needs a special person, and Guyana and CARICOM have put forward a special person.