Two years ago, I announced my campaign for United Nations Chief.

Here's a personal reflection of this journey.

Mar 31, 2026

Two years ago today, I announced I was running for UN Secretary General. Not because I could win, nor because it was a great opportunity. To be honest, it was and remains a pretty bad one: I spend my days seeking to reform an institution that is decaying but is deadset in keeping the status quo alive, even when it means more people dying. I did it because I’m scared, and angry. No one adequately deals with the biggest threats of our time, from climate change to pandemics. Think for a second what this will do to our world, to your life, to the future your children will live through. National leaders are more preoccupied with staying in power, and no global institution is taking the leadership. That scared me deeply. But more than this, it angered the hell out of me: we need global action, leadership, and accountability. And we are not getting it.

Click here to read my last newsletter about how the UN chief is chosen, when, and why it matters

Two years ago today, I really believed that the next UN chief would be a woman, and that there would be little fight or discussion about it besides the pushbacks from a few rogue states. I mean, call me naive, but how can anyone justify 80 years without a single woman being selected? Some try the ridiculous argument that the chief is chosen based on merit. I laugh when I hear this. Then I cry inside… How can anyone still pretend 1. half of humanity has not been good enough, even once, in 80 years, or 2. That this is about merit and not who is acceptable to the biggest powers and the sexist weak little men who run them?

Two years ago today, I thought that by making the case for global action — on climate change, inequality, wars, AI — we could successfully push for reform and build a better, fairer world. I knew it was a hard battle: the UN feels distant from our daily lives, we have no say, no vote, and no means of holding it accountable. But the argument was there, and I wanted to make the UN political and relevant to the peoples it is supposed to serve.

Two years later, the world resembles a horror movie. With a rapist, war criminals, and complicit weaklings at the helm of several permanent Security Council members, equality is clearly the least of their concerns, second only to building a better, fairer, or more peaceful world. Superpowers play Russian roulette with our futures. Israel’s genocide of Palestinians: invasions, carpet bombings, occupation, apartheid. All with the support of Western governments. Russia’s illegal invasion and occupation of Ukraine. The US’ war on Iran, illegal invasion of Venezuela, inhuman blockade of Cuba. Sudan’s ongoing humanitarian crisis — the worst in the world — largely ignored, while the UAE directly supports war crimes there. The list goes on.

Two years later, it is honestly very hard to maintain hope and faith in a system that has often enabled some of the worst crimes, too weak to stand up to superpowers, and resistant to the very reforms needed for its rebirth from its own ashes. And look, the truth is obviously more complicated than this. The UN is underfunded, can only do what its member states allow, is blocked by the veto of five countries, and lacks the leadership to push beyond those constraints. Despite all of this, its staff and agencies save humanity from hell more often than we acknowledge, from reducing polio cases by over 99% to destroying 98.39% of the world’s declared chemical weapons stockpiles.

Two years later, it has become clear that the selection process of the next UN chief - currently underway and concluding this year - will be no different than in the past. Opaque, with the UN offering a few public hearings as a fig leaf for a process that remains profoundly undemocratic. Candidates unable to truly campaign on ideas for fear of being vetoed. Superpowers making deals behind closed doors.

Those two years of campaigning to rally public support around the need for change have however taught me that in the bleakest of times there is hope for change. This campaign has struck a nerve. I have obviously failed at changing the selection process, and one person against the UN was never going to do this on their first try. But still, it struck a nerve.

Together, we built the first people-backed political programme for the UN, crowdsourced with citizens across the world, as a concrete roadmap to tackle climate change, wars, AI, dictatorships, pandemics, and poverty. Not abstract ideas. Actual proposals shaped by the people the UN is supposed to serve.

We formally challenged the Secretary-General selection process through a complaint to UN Special Procedures, exposing it for what it is: a broken, opaque, and undemocratic system, more closed than presidential elections in China or Russia. The mandate holder refused to take it up, arguing the UN is not ready for this level of reform. That tells you everything.

We held consultations with citizens from Nairobi to New York, hearing directly how trust in the UN has collapsed, and what it would take to rebuild it. We brought experts, diplomats, and UN officials into public town halls to confront these failures and discuss concrete reforms.

And we pushed this debate into the public space through lectures, protests, newsletters, and direct engagement with ambassadors and UN officials, who repeatedly told us not to draw attention to what is broken. We did it anyway.

events in Nairobi & Milan

But over the last two years, with the UN’s clear failure in stopping wars and condemning superpowers, I asked myself more than ever before: is it worth continuing? Or should we dismantle what is broken and build something new instead?

When countless top officials insist it is not their fault, that the UN does its best and is succeeding, you have to wonder whether they are genuinely deluded, on some sort of hallucinogenic drugs, or simply protecting the system that sustains them. The fault lies in the power structures of the UN, that much is clear. But the UN chief and top officials can lead the way, use their actual power to stand up to superpowers, put themselves on the line physically (why isn’t UN Chief Guterres on one of the freedom flotillas to break sieges in Gaza or Cuba?) and go as far as orchestrating legal coups to overcome to veto power when actual genocides are taking place. Instead, they issue statements of condemnation, often without even naming the complicity of superpowers.

So what then? Do we keep pushing to reform an institution dead set on its own decline, but whose agencies do extraordinary work despite everything? Or do we try to build something new? Both are hard roads. Both can be pursued at once. But I want to know what you think needs to happen to ensure that climate change, artificial intelligence, wars, dictatorships, pandemics, and poverty no longer define our future.

What I know for certain is this: until the next UN chief is chosen, I will keep campaigning. Raising public awareness about a system that allows superpowers to shove their crimes under the rug. Pushing our progressive political programme. Using every tool available to challenge this broken and undemocratic process. And forcing candidates and countries to be transparent about their priorities, so that we, the people, can hold them accountable.

I hope you’ll join me and endorse my campaign here!

Onward,

Colombe

PS: Expect another email from me tomorrow. Nominations for UN chief close then, and I’ll take you through what it means, who is in the race, and what to expect next.

The Unity Chronicles

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