Michelle Bachelet Drops Out of the UN Secretary-General Race

Former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet withdrew from the UN secretary-general race on Saturday, ending a campaign to become the first woman to lead the United Nations. Her bid lost steam after her support among Security Council members collapsed in a third round of informal straw polling, according to Reuters.

Bachelet, 74, announced the decision in a video posted to Instagram. She said she would carry on her international work with the same determination, did not regret taking on the challenge, and acknowledged that the timing may not have been right for the kind of candidacy she wanted to run, the Britain Herald reported.

A two-time president of Chile who served as UN high commissioner for human rights from 2018 to 2022, Bachelet had built her campaign around defending multilateralism and international law. She argued that both were under sustained pressure and that the world body needed leadership committed to protecting them.

What the straw polls showed

The withdrawal followed the third informal straw poll of the 15-member Security Council, held on Friday, September 18. In these informal votes, council members mark each candidate as "encourage," "discourage," or "no opinion," giving the council a private read on support before it makes any formal move. Reuters reported that Bachelet's support had all but collapsed in the latest round.

One published tally showed Bachelet receiving a single vote of encouragement against 11 votes of discouragement and three no-opinion votes. Her numbers had been sliding for months, with the same count giving her six votes of encouragement in July and two in August. Costa Rica's Rebeca Grynspan now leads the field with nine votes of encouragement, followed by Guyana's Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett with eight.

Who is left in the race

The UN secretary-general race now has seven candidates competing to succeed António Guterres, whose second five-year term ends on December 31, 2026. Alongside Grynspan and Rodrigues-Birkett, the field includes Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency; Macky Sall, the former president of Senegal; and María Fernanda Espinosa, the Ecuadorian diplomat. More candidates can still enter the contest.

Bachelet was nominated by Chile earlier this year and drew backing from Brazil and Mexico. Her departure does not end the push for a woman from Latin America to take the top post. Her campaign had been framed as part of a broader push for a woman from Latin America to take the UN's top post. The shift in momentum toward Grynspan keeps that possibility alive.

Criticism shadowed the campaign

The bid also faced organized opposition. UN Watch, a Geneva-based human rights organization, ran a months-long diplomatic and public campaign against Bachelet's candidacy, drawing on a 2022 report that reviewed her record as high commissioner. The group argued that she had been too muted on abuses by authoritarian governments, including China's mass detention of Uyghurs and crackdowns on dissent in Russia and Iran.

Its executive director, Hillel Neuer, said governments had been unable to ignore the record his group assembled, and argued that the United Nations should not reward silence in the face of repression. The criticism alone did not sink the campaign, but the steadily falling straw poll numbers left Bachelet with little room to continue.

How the next chief gets chosen

The Security Council will eventually recommend a single candidate to the 193-member General Assembly. To win the recommendation, a candidate needs at least nine council votes and no veto from any of the five permanent members: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Once the council reaches consensus, approval by the Assembly has long been treated as a formality.

The decision lands as world leaders gather in New York for the General Assembly session, putting the succession question in front of a full diplomatic audience. With months still left before Guterres steps down, the field could shift again, but the early straw polls suggest the council is converging on a smaller group of front-runners.

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