Being appointed as Under-Secretary-General for Safety and Security is an honour, matched only by the complexity of the mandate ¡ª and the opportunity to lead meaningful change.
Welcome to our series ¨C Part 1: The First 100 Days - Getting your footing in the hot seat
Every day, your work sustains hope in the world's hardest places. Your decisions help keep humanitarian workers safe as they deliver aid to refugees, protect peacekeepers as they monitor fragile ceasefires, and enable development experts who are rebuilding communities after conflict. When security works, lives are saved, and the impossible becomes possible. That's not just a job - that's a privilege.
Since security is the ultimate pre-requisite for any Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ activity, as a USG you will be responsible for enabling all Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ mandates: this means reaching out to over 123 million people that rely on the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ, with over 180,000 personnel, many in the world's most dangerous places. You will report to the Secretary-General and answer to 193 Member States. You will coordinate with over 50 Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ entities who don't report to you but expect you to support their programmes all over the world. And all this during the biggest financial crisis that the organization has experienced.
There is no gentle onboarding. Your first priority is to understand the system you now lead -while it is running at full speed. You will inherit active security crises in multiple locations, pending decisions that can't wait, expectations from all directions that at times contradict each other, and a calendar packed with meetings you don't yet understand.
Especially if you are not 'from the system', the United Nations will surprise you with its own codes, own language, its mosaic of cultures and sub-cultures, and its administrative processes that will test your multidimensional cognitive ability.
The complexity of the United Nations Security Management System (Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵSMS) will reveal itself quickly. At the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ, security is a shared responsibility - a core principle that needs regular reminding - from staff who treat security as a polite suggestion, to agency security heads who approach consensus from an independent lens. You will navigate a spectrum of perspectives.
Your success will depend on building partnerships and relationships. You will orchestrate security across entities that have their specific mandates and imperatives, in contexts you cannot control, with expertise you are still building and resources that never match the need. Therefore, partnering is a must.
So is the diversity in skillset. Security is not just about gates and guns; it is about enabling work in impossible places. Your staff require skills to juggle project management, communication, data mining, innovation, diplomacy, budget, analysis, and quick thinking in crises situations ¨C to name a few.
Your second priority is understanding field realities, fast. Headquarters can insulate you from what's really happening across the world. You need to hear directly from people in the field¡ªthose reaching beneficiaries, making hard calls in real time, whose lives depend on getting security right. That's where the impact happens.
Soon you will realize that the system is more fragmented than you thought; resources are scarcer than the mandate requires; politics playout more than you'd prefer; field needs are greater than headquarters understand; change is harder but more necessary than ever. You will also discover that this job is impossible to do perfectly, but that doesn¡¯t make it less captivating and exciting.
And here's what makes it worthwhile: you will witness extraordinary courage from Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ personnel in conflict zones, feel the satisfaction when an evacuation succeeds or a convoy gets through safely, and work alongside some of the most dedicated people you'll ever meet. You will have moments when a single decision protects dozens of lives, when one new approach unlocks aid for thousands who had no other way out, when innovation in one location transforms safety everywhere. On your hardest days, you will remember why this matters. The moments when you make a real difference will make all the complexity worth it.