Who Is the Current Secretary-General of the United Nations?
António Guterres is the Secretary-General of the United Nations. He came into office Jan. 1, 2017 and is the ninth Secretary-General.
Guterres was born on April 30, 1949 and raised in Lisbon, Portugal. After a brief academic career in Systems Theory and Telecommunications Signals, he started a career in politics, joining Portugal’s Socialist Party and eventually rising to Secretary-General of the party in 1992. Guterres was appointed Prime Minister of Portugal in 1995, and held the position for two terms until 2002. In 2005 he was elected UN High Commissioner and was an outspoken advocate for a coordinated response from Europe to the refugee crisis. He held the position until 2015. Guterres was put forward as Portugal’s candidate for Secretary-General in February 2016 and was elected Secretary-General in October 2016. Guterres assumed the role of Secretary-General on January 1, 2017 and asked everyone “to join me in making one shared New Year’s resolution: Let us resolve to put peace first.”
