This fall, Ban Ki-Moon’s ten-year tenure at the United Nations will end. Ban focused on climate change, but otherwise has had little impact on meatier issues facing the U.N. He has seemed stymied by matters of war and peace, much less reform of the U.N. bureaucracy, enhancing operational efficiency or boosting morale within the organization (by protecting whistle-blowers, for example). The scandal of introducing a virulent cholera into Haiti – through the failure to check the health of U.N. “peacekeepers” before their deployment and the failure to dig adequate sanitary latrines – is notorious. The sexual exploitation of children by U.N. troops in the Central African Republic has been a horror show, with no discipline of the miscreants.

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With all of these challenges, what the U.N. needs is a leader who is savvy about politics, knowledgeable and dedicated to human rights.

It should be someone who can sidestep the passive resistance used by organizations to avoid change, and someone who welcomes whistle-blowers, such as Anders Kompass, back into the fold.

The next U.N. Secretary-General should be a leader who has taken part in crisis management in various regions of the world – a skill set often gained through service on the U.N. Security Council, or from prior U.N. leadership positions.

But the most critical part of the U.N. Secretary-General’s job is quiet diplomacy in preventing the escalation of tensions and disputes into wars. This requires careful work with heads of state and international leaders, both on the 38th floor of the United Nations in New York and in the field as well.

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The Secretary-General must also woo support from the “P-5” – United States, France, England, Russia, and China that enjoy permanent seats and hold veto power on the United Nations Security Council.

U.N. observers predict that the next Secretary-General will hail from one of the Eastern European states – a regional group deserving a turn at bat. Most U.N. member states support the idea of regional rotation.

Antonio Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal who gained kudos for his leadership of the United Nations refugee agency, may be hard put to avoid a quiet Russian veto. Helen Clark, a former prime minister of New Zealand who ran the U.N. Development program, has had mixed reviews. Argentinian foreign minister Susana Malcorra, who served as Ban Ki Moon’s chief of staff, faces opposition from the United Kingdom because of the unresolved fracas over the Falkland Islands.

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Serbia’s former foreign minister Vuk Jeremic, who attended Harvard’s Kennedy School, will likely be sidelined by his unrepentant stance on Kosovo, where NATO had to fight an air war and ground campaign to assure that the predominantly Muslim province would be protected as a newly independent state. Bulgaria’s Irina Bokova has drawn some heated criticism as head of UNESCO for sponsoring U.N. cultural activities that some thought showed pointed hostility to Israel.

Slovakia has also fielded its foreign minister Miroslav Lajcak, who served in Bosnia as High Representative, but he has not attracted much international notice and has no other U.N. experience. Bulgaria’s Kristalina Georgieva, a former vice president of the World Bank, has offered her name at the last minute, but also lacks any U.N. experience – an obstacle to knowledgeable reform.

Former Slovenian president Danilo Turk – an international lawyer who served eight years as ambassador to the United Nations in New York and five years inside the house as the U.N.’s Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs – has a profile that would seem to fit the bill, as a more-than-worthy successor to Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

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Turk can point to his muscular service on the U.N. Security Council, beating back the hand-chopping reign of terror of West African insurgent Foday Sankoh, as well as guiding the key mediation between Jakarta and East Timor during the paroxysm of violence that swept through that region.

Turk is also a world-renowned expert on human rights law. His eloquence and credibility were on full display during the recent General Assembly debate when, for the first time, candidates for the position of U.N. Secretary-General had the opportunity to present their vision for the future of the global organization.

Turk has called for more effective recruitment of top-notch U.N. personnel, including women, boosting morale within the organization, involvement of the private sector, a focus on field-oriented work, and close collaboration with the Security Council in reaching practical decisions.