Opening the month of September at the Security Council, the French presidency recalled before the press what the office of Secretary-General entails. Three parts emerge: peace and security, the impulse given to development and human rights, and the running of an administration with constrained finances. President Macky Sall's candidacy answers each of them.
Peace and security, first. The Secretary-General's first duty is to prevent wars and to help bring them to a close. He raises the alarm before the irreparable and offers his good offices, drawing on the regional organisations the Charter associates with the maintenance of peace. A candidacy from a continent where peace is built each day knows the price of prevention, always lower than that of intervention.
An impulse to development and rights. Without voting budgets or signing treaties, the Secretary-General carries weight over the agenda. He can put on it the debt that smothers and the financing that is missing. He can also warn about the people the climate displaces and recall rights when they recede. The candidacy has already given that impulse, putting debt and development finance first.
Running an administration with counted means. The Organization is going through a liquidity crisis: unpaid contributions, tightened budgets, a reform under way to adjust its means without giving up its mission. The Secretary-General must hold a global administration together without adding to its weight. He sets its priorities and accounts for them.
The experience of a head of state. Twelve years at the head of a state imposed these demands on President Macky Sall every day, and the chairmanship of the African Union in 2022 took him from the G20 to the world's summits. That experience explains why the vision statement filed with the United Nations frames its proposals as obligations, among them stronger governance of the Organization.
Africa at its heart, the world in its sights.
The French Security Council presidency's press conference of 1 September 2026 is public. Read all public positions at www.mackysall.net