Forty-five years ago, Ugandan diplomat Olara Otunnu devised an informal voting system to break a bitter deadlock over the appointment of a United Nations secretary-general. Now, in one of diplomacy’s more intriguing ironies, the same ‘Otunnu Formula’ is being used to determine whether he should occupy the world’s highest diplomatic office.
Otunnu is one of seven candidates seeking to succeed António Guterres. The field includes Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan, who emerged as the early favourite after the first informal Security Council straw poll, alongside former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi, former Senegalese President Macky Sall, Ecuador’s María Fernanda Espinosa and Guyana’s Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett. Yet, every experienced diplomat knows that the eventual winner must not only impress the wider UN membership but also avoid a veto from one of the Security Council’s five permanent members.
For the former Ugandan foreign minister and UN undersecretary-general, however, the contest is about more than personal ambition. Wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo have exposed the limitations of the international system.
The next secretary-general, he argues, must restore the organisation’s ability to persuade, mediate and command international trust. Otunnu says he entered the race only after repeated encouragement from world leaders and former colleagues convinced him his experience was needed at a difficult moment for the UN.
“The UN’s moral authority is not lost, but it has been seriously eroded,” he explains in an exclusive interview, arguing that the secretary-general’s greatest strength lies not in military power but in leadership rooted in the principles of the UN Charter.
His convictions were forged long before he entered international diplomacy.
As a student leader in Uganda, Otunnu witnessed the descent of Idi Amin’s regime into terror. “I experienced first-hand the nature and magnitude of evil,” he recalls. The experience taught him how easily brutality can become accepted as normal, how institutions crumble under political pressure and how dictators seek either to eliminate opponents or buy them off. “This searing experience was the beginning of my lifelong commitment to human rights.”
During our conversation he also reflected on Amin’s ability to charm those he wished to recruit before turning ruthlessly against anyone who resisted. It was, he believes, a lasting lesson in the corrupting nature of unchecked power.
Exile eventually took him to St John’s College, Oxford, which he describes as “my first United Nations”. Suddenly, he found himself among what he calls “all the tribes under the sun”, forging friendships with fellow students including Tony Blair, Benazir Bhutto and future political leaders from Africa, Asia and Australia. Oxford, followed by Harvard, convinced him that successful diplomacy begins with understanding cultures long before negotiations start.
His career subsequently took him through virtually every level of the UN—as ambassador, president of the Security Council, foreign minister, president of the International Peace Academy and, perhaps most memorably, Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict.
Among his strongest memories is a visit to a refugee settlement in Sudan, where Muslim elders asked the UN to help build a church for their Christian neighbours because they already had a mosque. Deeply moved by the request, Otunnu found private donors to help. For him, it remains a powerful reminder that ordinary people often show more wisdom than political leaders.
He believes the next secretary-general must also confront challenges scarcely imagined when the UN was founded. Artificial intelligence, he says, requires an international framework bringing together governments, technology companies and experts to establish shared rules before the technology outpaces regulation. One of his first priorities would be convening a global round table on AI.
Otunnu also offered a striking perspective on Idi Amin’s expulsion of Uganda’s Asian community. While describing it as a “horror and catastrophe”, he believes many who left ultimately escaped the even greater bloodshed that later engulfed those who remained. Uganda, he says, has never fully recovered from the destruction of much of its professional and intellectual class.
He is under no illusion about the political mountain he faces. Although Grynspan has emerged as the early frontrunner, UN leadership contests often change dramatically as governments seek a consensus candidate acceptable to the major powers.
Whatever the outcome, Otunnu has already shaped the office he now seeks. Four-and-a-half decades after devising the informal straw-poll system that transformed the selection of secretaries-general, he now finds himself subject to the very process he created—a fitting twist in a diplomatic career that has taken him from the terror of Idi Amin’s Uganda to the threshold of the world’s most demanding international post.
Shyam Bhatia | Senior journalist based in London and author of The Quiet Correspondent
(Views are personal)