BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (Dec. 29, 2025) — Argentine Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and a candidate for the post of United Nations secretary-general, warned in an interview with EFE about the absence of the UN from the world’s main conflicts, cautioned that the organization is on a path of “growing irrelevance,” and positioned himself as a potential mediator and “bridge builder.”
Grossi, 64, was officially presented as a candidate by the Argentine government on Nov. 26 and is emerging as a secretary-general who would be “impartial but not impotent or indifferent,” with a more proactive than declarative approach, supported by his experience in managing armed conflicts.
“What we see when we analyze international life is that the United Nations are quite, not to say completely, absent from the resolution of any of the conflicts you can imagine on the global map. In Africa, in Europe between Russia and Ukraine, in Southeast Asia between Cambodia and Thailand, you don’t see it,” said the diplomat, who believes the UN “is not fully fulfilling the role for which it was created.”
After taking office in 2019, and especially following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, Grossi has reshaped the role of IAEA director general into one marked by a strong presence on the ground. One of the pillars of his candidacy is his successful intervention to prevent a nuclear accident at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia plant after the Russian occupation. To that end, he traveled to the site, managed to install his own team at the facility, and held talks with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, even achieving two specific ceasefires.
THE NEED TO “GO BACK TO BASICS”
Based on his experience, Rafael Grossi emphasized the need for the UN to “go back to basics” and focus on conflict resolution: “We cannot expect countries to keep providing money for international assistance and cooperation in a world where wars are proliferating. If there is war, there is nothing—there is no energy, no health, no education.” In response, he suggested rethinking the role he seeks to assume starting in 2027: “The secretary-general can play a bridge-building role, can put forward initiatives, and I say this on the basis of my own experience.”
According to him, the UN has erred through partiality and “ideologized positions” in conflicts such as the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which he believes “have greatly strained the UN’s acceptability on the ground” and prevented it from playing a more significant role. “To be useful in this dynamic, what I have to maintain is an active but absolutely impartial position. From the moment I start putting on one jersey or the other, the other side stops cooperating,” he warned.
Asked about a potential intervention by the United States in Venezuela, he urged that “the conflict not be intensified” and that “peace and territorial integrity” in the Caribbean country be preserved. He considered that “this is a case where the United Nations could play an important role in steering a dialogue that today lacks a platform,” and stressed that this could be facilitated by a Latin American secretary-general.
His background, he added, would bring to the post a deeper understanding of the region than others have had, as well as an understanding of the historical processes that have led to certain situations, such as Venezuela’s.
“STOP THE BALL AND SEE WHERE WE WANT TO GO”
Grossi, who is not the only Latin American positioning himself for the post and joins others such as former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet and former Costa Rican vice president Rebeca Grynspan, said the UN has become a “tremendously declarative” organization that avoids addressing real challenges through statements “that are useless and do not solve any problems for ordinary people.”
To this he added the need to look inward, review mandates and avoid overlapping functions among agencies: “You can’t have seven agencies dealing with climate. It can’t be. Not only for financial reasons, but also for reasons of diplomatic effectiveness.” Because of this, he said, “it is logical that there is a certain irritation among the states that finance that effort,” and he concluded: “As we would say in Argentina, we need to stop the ball a bit and see where we want to go with the United Nations.”
With information from EFE
