Ban Ki-moon will be retiring as the Secretary-General of the United Nations in December this year. He began his first term in January 2007 and was renewed for a second in 2011. The world over that period of time has been a tumultuous place with among many other things, the advent of the global financial crisis, growing anxiety over the impact of climate change, the collapse of the Arab Spring and the virtual disintegration of order and much semblance of stability in the Middle East, the Ebola crisis in West Africa and China’s relentless rise as a global great power.

In so far as these events have come to the attention of the Secretary-General’s office, Ban Ki-moon has presided over them with a generally dignified calm. This is undoubtedly a virtue for the person who might be considered the world’s foremost diplomat. But many will be disappointed that he failed or was unable to do more to address effectively the consequences of this disruption and better confront the increasingly complex challenges now confronting the international community.

To ask this however, is probably to ask more than might be reasonably expected of any single human being. All seven of the Secretary-General’s predecessors came to office with some measure of hope and high expectation and almost all departed with a sense of disappointment. That is because it is an almost impossible job. Although the UN charter (Article 97) anoints the Secretary General as the “chief administrative officer of the (UN) organisation,” few individuals with a comparable chief executive status in any enterprise, business or even government bureaucracy, confront the same constraints on their authority.

The Secretary-General and by extension, the UN itself, can only ever do the things its member states allow it to do and this seems to be increasingly constrained. Perhaps there is a diplomatically accomplished individual with the persuasive powers to drive more from the UN organisation, but even when international goodwill can be channelled into action, this often seems to be possible only at the margins of effective policy.  The sad reality of contemporary international life is that multilateralism is everywhere in trouble and failing to fulfil the ambitious expectations that many in the international community have for it.

This is certainly true of parts of the UN system. While it remains vital to the maintenance of global order and to managing some of our most challenging problems, the UN is a flawed institution and in desperate need of creative reform. While some previous Secretary’s Generals, such as Kofi Anan have striven heroically to do so, progress has been painfully slow and to date largely unimpressive.

The Secretary-General who will take office at the beginning of 2017 may well have a great opportunity to bring reform should he or she wish to seize it. While excessive optimism is likely to be misplaced, a glimmer of hope emerges in the new process of selection which is being adopted in 2016.

The Charter says only that the Secretary-General “shall be appointed by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council.” In the past there has been little transparency in the process, names were proposed and considered largely behind closed UN doors, and eventually a candidate emerged. That person’s key credential was invariably that he (and they have all been men) had the support of the P(ermanent)5 – US, Russia, China, the UK and France. Less emphasis was placed on great merit than on finding someone with whom everyone could live: generally, a lowest common denominator candidate won through.

Few students of the UN system believe this has served the system well. In a process now promising to be more transparent and inclusive, governments have been invited to nominate their candidates who will be subject to public scrutiny and examination and be judged against some defined criteria: proven leadership and managerial abilities, experience in international relations and strong diplomatic, communication and linguistic skills. The Security Council will preserve its power to nominate an appointee, a reality which means the P5 continuing to have a critical say in the decision, but there is now more openness about the process.

This has already led to considerable speculation and widespread discussion about possible candidates, including two former prime ministers from this part of the world, Helen Clark of New Zealand and Kevin Rudd from Australia.

As a female candidate and a person who is widely regarded as having been a success running the UNDP, Clark probably has a clear edge here. Telling against her, however, is that the Eastern European grouping within the UN has never produced a Secretary General (three have come from Western Europe, two from Asia, two from Africa and one from Latin America) and is seen by many as long overdue. While this in itself is not enough, there is a growing list of possible candidates with experience and credibility and the potential to succeed. These include Igor Luksic, former Prime Minister and current Foreign Minister of Montenegro; Danilo Turk, the former President of Slovenia; Irina Bokova, the former Foreign Minister of Bulgaria and now Director General of UNESCO and the former Macedonian Foreign Minister, Srgjan Kerim.

It is too early to be confident that any of these candidates can win through or to ignore the possibility of a strong alternative emerging later on. Whoever succeeds, however, they will face an enormous challenge to invest the office of the Secretary-General with the authority necessary to run effectively a very complex organisation. To also give serious attention to tackling creative and constructive reform, well, that would be courageous.

Russell Trood is a Professor of International Relations and Director of the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University. He is also President of the United Nations Association of Australia. This article originally appeared on Griffith Asia Insights on 18 February. It is republished with permission.