Indian-origin Akanksha Arora, 34, is running run for the post of United Nations (UN) Secretary-General. She is the first person to declare her candidacy against incumbent Antonio Guterres, who is seeking a second five-year term beginning January 2022 as the chief of the world organisation.
Akanksha Arora, who works as an audit coordinator for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is launched her campaign #AroraForSG in February.
Arora joined the United Nations in 2016. Within two years, she felt the organisation was failing the people it was created to help. In January 2019, she decided there was no better way to make a change than to lead it.
“The UN has let people down, it hasn’t served those who it is here to serve,” said Akanksha Arora. “UN’s biggest enemy is its own inability to deliver. Decision-making is not the problem. It’s implementation that we’re falling short on. That has led to the loss in trust and credibility of the institution where people just don’t expect the UN to do anything,” she added.
At the top of her priority list of global issues she wants to tackle is the refugee crisis, where she “envisages the UN to be a guardian for the refugees”. While climate, education, technology, and economic recovery post-Covid also make her priority list, Arora feels a lot of work needs to be done on women’s empowerment, at the organisation she is part of as well as globally.
“People in my position aren’t supposed to stand up to the ones in charge. We are supposed to wait our turn, hop on the hamster wheel, go to work, keep our heads down and accept that the world is the way it is,” said Akanksha Arora in the two-and-a-half minute campaign video posted online.
“That is why I am running for the Secretary-General of the United Nations. I refuse to be a by-stander. I will not accept this is the best the UN can do,” she says.
Born in India, Akanksha Arora moved to Saudi Arabia at the age of six after her mother – a gynaecologist – took up a job offer there. Three years later, she moved back to India to a boarding school after her parents were unable to afford the only American school in the southwestern Saudi city.
At 18, Akanksha Arora was offered a scholarship at York University in Toronto for her undergraduate studies and stayed in Canada to work after finishing university. In 2016, she moved to New York to start work with the UN.
“This whole aspect of understanding and respecting people [while living in different countries and cultures] is diplomacy. It is, at the end of the day, caring for people, appreciating and embracing diversity and just having respect for everyone. That’s diplomacy.”
Earlier this year, Antonio Guterres had confirmed that he will seek a second five-year term as chief of the world organisation. After a reformed selection process including a public informal dialogue session in the General Assembly, Guterres entered office on January 1, 2017. His term ends on December 31, 2021 and the term of the next Secretary-General begins from January 1, 2022.
Guterres is the ninth United Nations Secretary-General and no woman in the 75-year history of the United Nations has held the position of the world’s top diplomat.
