Government has nominated and submitted the candidature of Ambassador Olara Otunnu, for the post of Secretary-General of the United Nations as the term of the current United Nations Secretary-General, H.E. Antonio Guterres, come to an end at the end of the year.
The Foreign Affairs Ministry Permanent Secretary, Bagiire Vincent Waiswa in a statement released on Sunday, called on UN member states to support Otunnu’s candidature.
“The Government of Uganda is confident that Ambassador Otunnu’s unique breadth of experience, spanning the UN Secretariat, the Security Council, national government, academia, and grassroots peacebuilding, makes him exceptionally well suited to lead the United Nations at this critical juncture in global affairs” he said.
Who is Ambassador Olara Otunnu ?
Ambassador Otunnu brings to this candidature over four decades of distinguished service at the highest levels of international diplomacy, having served both within the United Nations system and in senior leadership roles across government, academia, and civil society.
Within the UN system, Ambassador Otunnu served as Under-SecretaryGeneral and the first Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (1998–2005), a mandate he built into one of the Organization’s most influential offices.
In this capacity, he successfully placed the protection of war-affected children on the agenda of the Security Council and designed the landmark compliance and monitoring regime adopted under Security Council Resolution 1612 in 2005, which remains in operation to-date.
He also served as Uganda’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations (1980–1985) and as President of the UN Security Council in December 1981, during which he introduced the strawballoting system for electing the Secretary-General, a procedure known since as the “Otunnu Formula” that has guided every such election since 1981.
At the national level, Ambassador Otunnu served as Uganda’s Minister of Foreign Affairs (1985–1986) and as a member of the Uganda National Consultative Council during the country’s transitional period following the fall of the Idi Amin regime.
He later led the International Peace Academy (now the International Peace Institute) as President from 1990 to 1998, and has held academic positions at Albany Law School, the American University in Paris, and the InstitutFrançais des Relations Internationales.
Ambassador Otunnu’s contributions to international peace and human rights have been recognized through numerous prestigious awards, including the Sydney Peace Prize (2005), the German Africa Prize (2002), and the Harvard Law School Alumni Association Award (2007).
In recent years, Mr. Otunnu has co-led Roco Paco, a community-rooted peacebuilding initiative alongside Chief Justice Emeritus Hon. Justice Alfonse Chigamoy Owiny-Dollo, dedicated to healing and rebuilding communities in northern Uganda following over two decades of conflict.
He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Jurisprudence from Oxford University and a Master of Laws from Harvard Law School, and is fluent in English, French, and Luo.
