Guyana UN candidate calls maintaining UN ‘collective responsibility’

Guyana's candidate to be United Nations secretary-general said on Thursday there is a collective responsibility to ensure the world body can continue to act as a force for good, while stressing the need to make it more agile and effective.



Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, a former schoolteacher who currently serves as her country's U.N. ambassador and was previously its foreign minister, is among six candidates to succeed Antonio Guterres as U.N. chief after his term expires at the end of the year.



Guterres’ successor faces the enormous task of revitalizing an organization in crisis and declining stature that is under increasing pressure to reform a bloated, costly bureaucracy and cut duplication across its many agencies.