UN Secretary-General Candidate María Fernanda Espinosa: The Interview

The race to become the next United Nations Secretary-General is heating up, with the Security Council preparing to hold its first straw polls to test the viability of the candidates. In this Global Dispatches exclusive, I speak with María Fernanda Espinosa, a former foreign minister, defense minister, and UN ambassador for Ecuador who served as president of the UN General Assembly from 2018 to 2019. Espinosa discusses how her early work with Indigenous communities in Ecuador continues to shape her approach to diplomacy and problem-solving. She also explains her proposal to create a crisis-prevention and early-action hub at the UN and shares her views on the organization's role in conflicts involving Iran and Ukraine. We also discuss how the next Secretary-General can advance global health and development—and what should replace the Sustainable Development Goals after their 2030 deadline. It is a wide-ranging conversation with a leading international diplomat seeking to lead the United Nations at a particularly precarious moment in global affairs.