A woman for UN chief ?

For 70 years, the United Nations has been the world’s go-to agency for relief from natural disasters, climate change, hunger, conflict, terrorism and disease. And it has always been led by a man. But now, as it canvasses for a new chief, there’s a push on to make sure women are seriously considered for the top job.

That’s good news, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau steps up Canada’s engagement with the organization after a season of neglect under the Conservatives. By bringing in a more transparent, gender-fair selection process, the UN is strengthening the secretary-general’s legitimacy and making itself more relevant.

The current chief, South Korea’s Ban Ki-moon, will step down at the end of 2016 after serving two five-year terms. And the 193member General Assembly has made a point of opening up the year-long selection process, traditionally done behind the closed doors of the 15-member Security Council. This time, the assembly is actively encouraging member states to publicly put forward qualified women candidates as well as men, in a process that will be a bit more transparent.

It’s a big job. Apart from being the world’s chief diplomat, peace broker and firefighter, the secretary-general oversees a budget of more than $5 billion and a staff of 30,000. And the broader UN system spends $40 billion a year, and employs more than 80,000 people.

Before the Security Council makes its choice, candidates will get a chance to make their pitch to the UN family that they have the leadership and diplomatic skills, the vision and the multi-lingual aptitude for the job. That public winnowing will make it harder for the Security Council to pass over good candidates.

And while it’s early days, the names of prominent women already are being mooted.

They include high-profile figures from Eastern Europe including Bulgarians Irina Bokova, who heads the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and European Union budget commissioner Kristalina Georgieva, as well as Croatia’s foreign minister Vesna Pusic. Former New Zealand PM Helen Clark, who now heads the UN Development Program, has drawn attention. So has Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.

While critics of the United Nations run down the place as an ineffectual talk shop, the UN is active in everything from trying to broker a ceasefire in Syria’s ghastly civil war to keeping the peace in Africa, battling climate change and hunger, promoting women’s rights and fighting AIDS. If it didn’t exist we’d need to invent it.

Founded in 1945 amid the cinders of the Second World War “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” the UN marked its 70th anniversary this year as a global force for good. That is, when the fractious Security Council allows it to be one.

War criminals have been prosecuted at UN tribunals. Some countries have given up the bomb, or foregone building one, thanks to UN action and treaties. UN peacekeeping and conflict resolution have saved countless lives. So has the World Food Programme. And smallpox has been eradicated.

But like any institution, the UN’s record is mixed. To its shame it failed to prevent genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia, and mass murder elsewhere. And it has been criticized for being slow-moving, inefficient and tainted by corruption.

Whoever succeeds Ban Ki-moon will have to have the skills to challenge the Security Council — led by the permanent, vetowielding United States, Britain, France, China and Russia — to rise above narrow national interests and muster more common resolve than we have seen in the past.

The new chief will also inherit a perennial wrangle over UN reform. There’s a movement to have the secretary general serve only a single seven-year term instead of five years with the possibility of a second term. That way, she or he wouldn’t have to curry favour with the major powers in the hope of getting reappointed. The permanent five have also resisted calls to give up their vetoes, and to grant permanent status to rising powers such as Germany, Japan, India, Brazil, South Africa and Nigeria.

But the institution is showing its age and a burst of fresh energy is needed to bolster its legitimacy.

Mao Zedong once proclaimed, famously, that women hold up half the sky. That qualifies them to hold up the UN as well.

With the UN looking for a new chief, there’s a push on to make sure women are considered