The Office of Secretary-General

Abstract

The progressive view of international organization holds that international interactions are malleable and susceptible to the development of procedural norms. As the potential embodiment of this liberal internationalism stands the entity of the Secretary-General. Pérez de Cuéllar pictured the Office in the wider context:‘[t]o understand correctly the role of the Secretary-General is to appreciate the whole mission of the United Nations. And that, in turn, is central to the way international life is organized.¹ Years ago Schwebel wrote: ‘[i]t is apparent that the future, if there is to be one, belongs to international organization; that the primary international organization of the present is the United Nations; and that the chief permanent officer of that organization necessarily occupies a unique and strategic position …² Cox even suggested that ‘the executive head may be the explanatory key to the emergence of a new kind of autonomous actor in the international system’.³