The next UN Secretary-General will take office at a moment when the multilateral system is under unusual pressure, but also when some of its most consequential reforms are already taking shape. UN80, the Pact for the Future, FfD4 and the transition beyond 2030 are all opening questions about how the United Nations should work, how decisions should be made and where power should sit.
That makes the first 1,000 days of the next mandate particularly important. The choices made during that period will help determine which reforms move forward, which senior appointments shape the organization, and which priorities define the Secretary-General’s first term. The window for action is real, but it is also time-bound.
This is the starting point for From 100 to 1,000 Days: The Next UN Secretary-General, a strategic agenda for the first 1,000 days of the next United Nations leadership. The initiative brings together regional perspectives on what the next Secretary-General should prioritize and how the incoming leadership can translate those priorities into action.
At the core of this work is GRIT, Guidance and Regional Intelligence for the Transition of UN Leadership, a series of regional dialogues designed to connect locally grounded expertise with the strategic decisions facing the incoming Secretary-General, the transition team and the UN’s future senior leadership. Its value lies in bringing regional knowledge, expectations and capacities into a transition process that is often shaped primarily from UN headquarters.
Convenings across Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean have brought together practitioners, scholars and stakeholders with diverse institutional, sectoral and political perspectives. A high-level leadership dialogue in New York will complement this regional process.
The premise was straightforward: the decisions facing the incoming Secretary-General look different depending on where you sit. A transition informed primarily from headquarters risks overlooking what regions see most clearly. Bringing those perspectives into the process can help identify not only where expectations converge, but also where they diverge and where the next leadership will face difficult strategic choices.
The results now feed a global policy analysis and a set of priority actions to be shared with the Secretary-General and their transition team.
One set of questions, four vantage points
Every convening in the series worked through a common set of questions. What should the incoming Secretary-General prioritize in a first term? What distinct needs, capacities and priorities does each region bring to the different parts of the UN system? Which internal actions, including appointments and reform agendas, are needed to deliver on those priorities? Which external actions are required, particularly in how the Secretary-General engages member states? And what leadership vision and style will be needed, including how the role and value of the UN should be communicated?
Holding the questions constant while changing the vantage point was a deliberate methodological choice. It makes it possible to distinguish a concern that is specific to one region from one that cuts across several, while also showing where different regions read the same problem in different ways.
Each convening brought together a deliberately plural group of regional experts, scholars and practitioners, alongside representatives connected to intergovernmental organizations, governments and the multilateral system. All sessions were held under the Chatham House Rule, and the initiative produces no formal statements or negotiated outputs. The aim was candid, forward-looking analysis rather than positioning.
From regional conversations to a global analysis
With the consultation cycle now complete, the work moves from convening to synthesis. The regional notes will feed into an overarching policy analysis and a final set of priority actions to be shared with the Secretary-General and their transition team.
The global analysis will look beyond simply aggregating the regional findings. It will examine what genuinely emerges across the five conversations, where the regions offer different readings of the same challenge, and where those differences point to choices that the next leadership will have to confront.
Expectations of the office are broad. Its independent powers are considerably narrower. The Secretary-General can use political capital, voice, good offices, senior appointments and aspects of management to influence the direction of the organization. But many of the larger objectives discussed across the consultations depend on conditions that Member States create: mandates, financing, political backing, respect for agreed norms and sufficient space for independent judgment.
That suggests that the transition agenda cannot be only about what the next Secretary-General is expected to deliver. It must also consider what Member States are prepared to provide in return.
The first 1,000 days will therefore be shaped not only by the priorities the next Secretary-General chooses, but by the political space available to pursue them. The regional consultations offer a way to understand that space before the new mandate begins, and to make the expectations surrounding the transition more explicit.
Five conversations will not settle those questions. But they can make it considerably harder to design the next chapter of the UN without listening to the regions that will have to live with it.