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María Fernanda Espinosa elected UN General Assembly president

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Ecuador’s Foreign Minister María Fernanda Espinosa Garces has been elected to lead the Assembly 73rd session starting in September replacing Serbia’s Miroslav Lajcak who’s term ends in just over three months.

This is the 4th time the President will not be a man in the United Nations’ 73 year history.

Garces beat another female candidate Honduran Ambassador to the UN Mary Elizabeth Flores Flake for the Presidency which for 2018/19 must be held by a candidate from Latin America and the Caribbean region.

Victory for Ecuador in a competitive race – needing a simple majority of 96 to win. Ecuador’s foreign minister received 128 votes to her opponent’s 62.

Current President Miroslav Lajcak presided over the vote.

“I wholeheartedly congratulate her excellency Ms María Fernanda Espinosa Garces of Ecuador on her election as the next president of the United Nations General Assembly. She will be only the fourth woman to hold this position in the history of the United Nations. Frankly, four out of 73 is no a record to be proud of but I am glad we are getting ourselves on track”

By tradition a region generally nominates one candidate for the position, but this year two women ran for the job to make history.

The role of the General Assembly President is largely ceremonial as they steer the debates and issues determined largely by the 193 member states.

The organ does control the budget of the global organisation and passes resolutions that while not legally binding like the Security Council, does carry the moral weight and symbolism that comes with representing almost all the nations of the world.

Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces also becomes the first woman from Latin American and the Caribbean to hold the position.

“I would like to dedicate this election to all the women in the world who participate in politics today and who face political and media attacks marked by machismo and discrimination. I would like to pay a special tribute to the women who struggle everyday to access jobs on equal terms, to women and girls who are victims of violence, to girls and adolescents who demand access to quality information and education. My commitment will always be to them.”

The UN Chief Antonio Guterres has made gender parity in the organisation one of his top agenda items, having already achieved parity in management of the organisation.

“I welcome this choice for another reason. It has been more than a decade since a woman has served as President of the General Assembly, when Sheikha Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa of Bahrain was President of the 61st session. We have to go back decades further to find the other two women to have occupied the post: Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit of India for the Eighth session, and Angie Brooks of Liberia for the twenty-fourth.

“I believe, as the President said, we can and must do better than a record of four women in 73 years, and two in the past half century.  No woman from my own continent, both Western or Eastern Europe has ever held the job.”

Diplomats have privately indicated that one major issue that swayed the vote was Honduras’ support for the United States decision to move their Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – a minority view at the UN. Ecuador sided with the majority.

 

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