Chapter 7:   DECISIONS AND DOCUMENTS

Section 5p:   Decisions to recommend appointments of Secretaries-General

 

Issues emerging with respect to the 2026 appointment of the next Secretary-General

 

In 2026, the United Nations will be appointing its tenth Secretary-General. This will be the second competitive process since new modalities for selecting Secretaries-General went into effect in 2016 and which culminated in naming António Guterres to his first term of office.

 

The foundation of the selection process is Article 97 of the UN Charter. This article provides that “The Secretary-General shall be appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.”

 

For decades, the deliberations in each of these two principal organs were carried out with minimal coordination. The Security Council, meeting in private as stipulated under its Rule 48, considered candidates put forward by their own governments and also by Council members themselves. Although rumours abounded, it was only after the Security Council had agreed on its recommendation that the Council officially made the results of its process public. Thereafter, the Council’s recommendation was conveyed to the General Assembly where, without exception, it was then confirmed.

 

A new era began in 2015 with the adoption of General Assembly resolution 69/321 under the agenda item “Revitalization of the work of the General Assembly”. That resolution, inter alia, requested the Assembly and Council Presidents

 

“to start the process of soliciting candidates for the position of Secretary-General through a joint letter addressed to all Member States, containing a description of the entire process and inviting candidates to be presented in a timely manner”.

 

In implementation of this provision, a joint letter was carefully negotiated and then circulated on 15 December 2015.

 

General Assembly resolution 69/321 provided for an additional new transparency measure, in that the Assembly and Council Presidents would jointly circulate to Member States the names of nominated candidates and supporting documents, including curricula vitae. The resolution also set out a provision that the Assembly would conduct informal dialogues or meetings with candidates.

 

In a later letter, the then outgoing General Assembly President, Mogens Lykketoft, provided a recap of the “historic cooperation” whereby he had worked closely with the Security Council and the entire Assembly membership “to advance the process to select and appoint the next Secretary-General”. This letter summarized the innovations introduced during the 2015-2016 process, both those set out in Assembly resolution 69/321 and those subsequently agreed:

 

• The monthly “coordination meetings” which were held between the Assembly President and successive Council Presidents starting in September 2015;

 

• The Assembly President’s briefing to the Security Council at its open debate on working methods in October 2015;

 

• The letter sent jointly by the Presidents of both principal organs in December 2015, which formally solicited candidates;

 

• The invitation to candidates to provide vision statements;

 

• The informal General Assembly dialogues with each candidate;

 

• Involvement of civil society, including through questions conveyed to the candidates at the Assembly’s informal dialogues; and

 

• The global town hall meeting the Assembly President organized in partnership with Al-Jazeera.

 

For its part, the Security Council has never adopted any formal document setting out its internal practices relating to the Council’s role in the appointment process. Rather, there is a tradition that an individual member which served as Council President during a critical month of the process would thereafter put into writing guidelines to aid in future appointment processes. The first of these were the “Wisnumurti Guidelines” prepared by the Indonesian representative of that name to record the procedures used in 1996. Following completion of the 2016 appointment process, the representative of Japan, Koro Bessho, wrote, in his national capacity, a letter in which he detailed the “achievements and lessons learned” during the Council’s part of the appointment process. He crafted his letter from the vantage point of having served as Security Council President in July 2016, which was the month when the Council began its private “straw poll” process to measure the support for candidates.

 

With the above documents, as well as the Assembly’s most recent, 2023 “Revitalization” resolution , as a backdrop, Member States are currently negotiating the 2025 resolution which will set out any agreed improvements for the 2026 appointment process. The Security Council members are not currently engaged in organized discussion over the Council’s role in the next appointment. This is partly because five of the present elected members will no longer be on the Council for the next process. Moreover, the five incoming members who will then be on the Council will not take up their seats until January 2026. Nonetheless, a number of present and future Council members are actively participating, as General Assembly members, in the negotiations on the section concerning the Secretary-General’s appointment to be included in the next Assembly “Revitalization” resolution.

 

While several new ideas are under discussion in the Assembly, the core arrangements and procedures followed in 2015-2016 are unlikely to undergo significant change. In contrast, given difficulties that emerged during the Security Council’s 2016 process, some key issues remain to be addressed.

 

In addition to addressing their separate responsibilities, both bodies, together, will be considering what the timeframe should be for the 2026 appointment process, whether fixed or simply indicative. Although the 2016 process was completed on 13 October of that year, almost three months before António Guterres would take office, some Member States advocate an earlier timeframe for the 2026 process. Because many of the steps to be followed are interconnected,  adopting specific timelines will require careful consideration of a number of details.

 

What follows is a discussion of areas where action may be undertaken by one, or both, principal organs relative to the 2026 appointment process.

 

1.  A joint letter by the Assembly and Council Presidents to initiate the 2026 appointment

 

As mentioned above, a joint letter formally initiating the 2016 appointment process was sent to all Member States on 15 December 2015. Presently, some Members are suggesting that an earlier date in 2025 would be preferable. The latest version of the draft “Revitalization” resolution presently under discussion in the General Assembly would provide that the joint letter be sent "at the beginning of the last quarter of the year preceding the end of the incumbent’s term". The Accountability, Coherence and Transparency Group (ACT) has proposed that the joint letter be issued in October.

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Thus, the timing of the joint letter remains an issue for members of both principal organs to work out. One factor to consider is that when the Security Council President signs a letter on behalf of all Council members (acting under the Council’s Rule 19), that letter must be agreed by full consensus.[1] For this reason, agreeing the joint letter to be sent in 2025 is likely to require more extensive negotiation on the Security Council side than in the General Assembly. No formal Member State approval process is required for Assembly Presidents to sign a letter, in view of the fact that these Presidents are elected, whereas members assume the Council presidency merely as the result of a fixed rotation.

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For reference, the Security Council presidencies for the final four months of 2025 will be the Republic of Korea in September, the Russian Federation in October, Sierra Leone in November, and Slovenia in December.

 

2.  Target date for a Council decision on basic principles and rules for its process

 

In 2016, a first statement detailing some aspects of the process the Security Council intended to follow was not made until May, by the then Council President, Egypt, at the Security Council stakeout. In mid-June 2016, the Council presidency of France sent a letter informing the General Assembly President of the date and modalities by which the Council would begin its straw poll process. The Assembly President forwarded this letter to all Member States and Permanent Observers, but it was not published.

 

Ambassador Bessho recommends that the Security Council should decide on its basic principles and rules for its part in the appointment at a date earlier than in 2016. He suggests that by 31 January of each appointment year, the Security Council President should send a letter to the Assembly President setting out the Council’s modalities.

 

3.  Possible deadline for submitting nominations

 

In order for the Security Council members to be informed of the full slate of candidates they will be considering, it has been suggested that a deadline be established for the submission of nominations. Proposals generally have ranged from between April to early June of the appointment year, with earlier nominations encouraged.

 

In establishing any deadline for nominations, one factor that would need to be considered would be a determination by the Security Council as to when it intended to begin its polling process. It would be optimal for any nominating cutoff to allow sufficient time for the Assembly’s informal dialogues to be completed before the start of the Council’s straw polls.

 

It should also be considered that if a deadline for submitting nominations is decided, the two principal organs might still wish to provide for a contingency allowing the acceptance of additional nominations in the event the Security Council became deadlocked over the main frontrunners and would like to consider other candidates.

 

4.  Timing of balloting in the Security Council

 

In the appointment year of 2016, the Security Council decided to begin its straw polls by the end of July, and this target date was mentioned in the 2015 joint letter. The Council met this target, as straw polls began in the Council on 21 July 2016.[2]

 

Based on this experience, the “Bessho letter” recommends that the Security Council begin its balloting earlier, i.e., in early June. But again, it would be optimal for any start date to be calibrated with the timing for submitting nominations so that the General Assembly’s informal dialogues with candidates would be completed before Council balloting began. It can be hoped that members of the Security Council, in their parallel capacity as members of the General Assembly, will express their views on these interrelated timing issues during negotiations on the Assembly’s 2025 “Revitalization” resolution. The inputs of Security Council members in the Assembly discussions will be important, since the Council is not likely to address its own timetable until after the 2025 revitalization resolution has been drafted.

 

5.  Dialogues of candidates with Security Council members

 

In 2016, in addition to the informal dialogues convened in the Assembly with nominated candidates, the Council members held “informal meetings” with each individual candidate privately at the Permanent Missions of successive Council Presidents. Once the holding of these informal meetings had become regularized, Security Council members agreed that the Council President would announce when each meeting had been held. As this contributed to transparency, it is hoped that such announcements will also be made in 2026.

 

In addition to their “informal meetings” with the Security Council members as a group, candidates also traveled to the capitals of Council members, sometimes making repeat visits. It is important to note that such visits were not organized by the Security Council as a whole, but rather were arranged bilaterally.

 

6.  Means of balloting in the Security Council

 

The Council’s Rule 48 states that “Any recommendation to the General Assembly regarding the appointment of the Secretary-General shall be discussed and decided at a private meeting” of the Security Council. In practice, so long as the Council votes officially on its recommendation resolution in a formal private meeting, it has been considered acceptable for the informal balloting by means of straw polls to take place in informal meetings.

 

Over its history, the Security Council has employed several options for sounding out the level of support for each candidate. In chronological order of their use, these have been:

 

• Conducting each round of balloting through voting on an actual draft decision, but with the official recommendation published not as a Council resolution, but as a communiqué issued pursuant to the Council’s Rule 55 (1946-1962);[3]

 

• Conducting each round of balloting through voting on actual draft resolutions, and with the official recommendation published as a Council resolution (1966-1976);

 

• Conducting straw polls with all candidates listed on a single ballot and using white ballots which did not differentiate between elected and permanent members and by which each Council member could indicate “encourages”, “discourages” or no comment, before publishing the official recommendation as a Council resolution (1981-1986);

 

• Conducting straw polls with all candidates listed on a single ballot and initially using white ballots for all Council members and then at some point introducing red ballots for permanent members, before publishing the official recommendation as a Council resolution (1991-2011); and

 

• Conducting straw polls with a separate ballot for each candidate, before publishing the official recommendation as a Council resolution (2016 to present).

 

The reason for no longer listing all candidates on a single straw poll ballot in 2016 was that in the past, amateur detectives among the Council members had sometimes guessed which ballot was submitted by a certain member based on the overall pattern of voting on all candidates listed together. The listing of only one candidate per ballot prevented such speculations, but did mean that each round of straw polls took more time.[4]

 

For the 2026 process, Security Council members will have before them the question of whether to use colour-coded ballots at any point in the voting process, to foreshadow whether one or more might eventually be cast, or whether to use only white ballots for both elected and permanent members throughout. This decision, however, does not need to be made at the outset of the straw poll process, but can be taken after one or more polls have been held.

 

Should members decide to again employ colour-coded ballots, they will need to decide at what point in the process to introduce them. In the two most recent competitive appointment processes, colour-coding was introduced at what turned out to be the final straw polls: the fourth ballot in 2006 and the sixth ballot in 2016.

 

Beyond the polling modalities used by Council members in the past, it is possible that alternative methods might be considered for 2026.

 

7.  Announcing the results of each round of balloting

 

Since straw polls were first employed in 1981, the Security Council has never engaged in a practice of officially announcing the results after each round. For 2016, all but one Council member supported having the Council President formally communicate the results of each straw polling to the General Assembly President and also make a public announcement for the benefit of the wider UN membership, the press and the interested public.

 

As mentioned earlier, for the Security Council President to act under Rule 19 on behalf of the Council requires the consensus of all fifteen members, and so the reservation of the one Council member meant that straw poll outcomes could not be officially announced. The issue was revisited several times during the polling process, but consensus still was not reached.

 

The “Bessho letter” mentions two arguments which were made by the dissenting Council member. The first relates to the fact that since 1966, the Security Council’s recommendation to the General Assembly has been decided in the format of a Council resolution. In that light, the Council member contended, the straw polls were an internal process in nature like the negotiating process for other Council resolutions, the results of which are never formally disclosed by the Council. A second argument was that announcing the results of straw polls might hurt the dignity of low-polling candidates, or those encountering significant opposition, and make it difficult for them to leave the process with honour.

 

Had the straw poll results remained undisclosed in 2016, one or both of those arguments might have held validity. But in actuality, the results of the straw polls were leaked immediately after each session. Thus, the Assembly President and the candidates did learn of each outcome, but not through the agency of the Security Council. Arguably, it was worse for candidates to find out in such a backhanded way that they had polled poorly than had they been informed in a more official, dignified way by the Council itself. In 2016, then Assembly President Lykketoft wrote that “It is neither respectful of the rest of the membership of the United Nations nor fair to the candidates themselves, for the results to be communicated through leaks from Council members to the world’s media.”

 

Another argument in favour of the Council officially announcing the results of each straw poll is that this also would prevent mistaken reporting by the media, which did occur once in 2016.

 

Because the question of officially announcing straw poll results was one of the more controversial aspects of the 2016 appointment process, Security Council members may wish to give early consideration to how they will handle this question during the 2026 process.

 

8.  Monthly progress meetings of the two Presidents

 

In the context of the closer cooperation established in 2015 and 2016 for the appointment process, the Presidents of the General Assembly and the Security Council began holding monthly meetings to monitor progress. These meetings were widely felt to be helpful, and it is expected that the practice will continue in 2026.

 

9.  Narrowing the field of candidates

 

In 2016, only three of the thirteen nominees withdrew their candidacies while balloting was still underway in the Security Council. The other ten, including those who repeatedly received feeble support, chose to remain in the race. In his letter, Ambassador Bessho indicates that continued balloting on such a large number of candidates had a negative impact on effectiveness. Accordingly, he suggests it might be useful to introduce conditions for automatically eliminating candidates who underperform in the balloting process. He offers several options:

 

• allowing only candidates obtaining a minimum number of positive votes to proceed to the next round;

 

• disqualifying candidates who receive a certain number of negative votes; or

 

• limiting the number of candidates who may be retained from one round to the next.

 

While General Assembly members may have views on this question, and the Assembly itself may offer proposals, under the broad terms of Article 97, and in light of past practice, it is the probable interpretation that a decision to eliminate underperforming candidates as the polls progress would lie with the Security Council itself.

 

​10.  Timing and modalities of the Council’s recommendation to the Assembly​

 

Various proposals have been put forward for a target date for completing the Secretary-General appointment process. Some have suggested 1 October, and this appears feasible since the Council’s 2006 recommendation was made on 9 October, and the 2016 recommendation was made on 6 October, with the General Assembly decisions in each case following within a week’s time. However, the draft “Revitalization” resolution presently under consideration in the Assembly proposes that the incoming Secretary-General be sworn in “during the month of September”. If this earlier date becomes agreed, it will require that most steps of the process in both bodies be taken earlier than was the case in 2016.

 

The Council’s Rule 48 stipulates that “Any recommendation to the General Assembly regarding the appointment of the Secretary-General shall be discussed and decided at a private meeting” (emphasis added). It is sometimes believed that this decision requires the consensus of all fifteen Council members, but this is not the case. Like any other substantive decision reached by the Security Council through official voting, the Council’s recommendation comes under Article 27(3) of the Charter and thus requires only a minimum nine affirmative votes and no negative vote by any permanent member. And in fact, in the 1953 recommendation that Dag Hammarskjöld be appointed to his first term, one Council member, the Republic of China, abstained.

 

Since 1976, the Security Council has standardized the language of its recommendation to the General Assembly. As set out most recently, the operative paragraph of resolution 2580 (2021) reads:

 

“Recommends to the General Assembly that Mr. António Guterres be appointed Secretary-General of the United Nations for a [second] term of office from 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2026.”

 

11.  Changing the term of office of the Secretary-General to seven years, non-renewable​

 

The draft “Revitalization” resolution presently under consideration in the Assembly proposes that instead of the traditional five-year, renewable term of office for Secretaries-General, the duration of their appointments should be changed to seven years, non-renewable. The draft gives the rationale that this would ensure “increased effectiveness of the mandate and allow an increased regional representation”.

 

The idea of a seven-year term was first proposed in 1990 by the respected former UN officials Brian Urquhart and Erskine Childers in their publication, A World in Need of Leadership: Tomorrow's United Nations,[5] In that same decade, the proposal came under discussion in the General Assembly’s Open-ended High-level Working Group on the Strengthening of the United Nations System but did not move forward. At the 2015 Munich Security Conference, “the Elders” supported the idea of a seven-year, non-renewable term in order to strengthen the Secretary-General’s “independence and avoid the perception that he or she is guided by electoral concerns”.[6]

 

The Charter itself is silent as to the duration of the term in office of the Secretary-General. The 1946 Assembly resolution 11(I) provided that “The first Secretary-General shall be appointed for five years, the appointment being open at the end of that period for a further five-year term.” It is indicative of the practice during the Organization’s earliest years that Security Council resolution 168 (1961) – by which the Council recommended that U Thant be appointed to fill the “unexpired portion” of Dag Hammarskjöld’s term of office – twice referred to Hammarskjöld’s term as having been “fixed by the General Assembly”.

 

From 1976 forward, however, the Council’s appointment recommendations to the Assembly have consistently specified the duration of time in office for which the recommendation is valid. Accordingly, this means that while the initial nine terms of office were fixed by the General Assembly without a duration being included in the Council’s recommendation resolution, the Council’s later ten recommendations have specified terms of office, which have then also been set out in the Assembly’s decision.

 

It is believed that some Member States, including one or more of the P5, are presently opposed to changing the Secretary-General’s term of office to seven years. This suggests that the Security Council, in the resolution eventually setting out its 2026 recommendation to the Assembly, will probably specify dates for a five-year term, as has been the case in the prior ten resolutions.

 

Were the Assembly’s 2026 appointment resolution to provide for a seven-year term, this would raise a question regarding the interpretation of Article 97: Does the requirement that the Assembly appoint the Secretary-General “upon the recommendation of the Security Council” mean the Assembly can adopt in its appointment resolution only the term of office specified in the Council’s recommendation resolution, or might the Assembly’s resolution override that specification? However, that neither body can act alone in setting the term of office finds support in the Assembly’s 1946 resolution 11(I) when it states

 

“There being no stipulation on the subject in the Charter, the General Assembly and the Security Council are free to modify the term of office of future Secretaries-General in the light of experience.” (emphasis added)

 

​12.  Does either the Council or the Assembly have “primacy” as to the appointment?​

 

In some recent discussions and literature, mention has been made that the General Assembly has “primacy” with respect to appointing the Secretary-General because under Article 97, the recommendation by the Security Council does not ultimate in the appointment of a candidate until the Assembly so decides. In this context, some have suggested that if the Council became blocked and thus unable to recommend a candidate to the Assembly by the time the present Secretary-General’s term expired, or if a majority of Assembly members did not accept the candidate recommended by the Council, the General Assembly could act on its own to appoint a Secretary-General.

 

It has been mentioned as a precedent that in 1950, when the Security Council was unable to agree on a candidate to follow Trygve Lie, the General Assembly acted alone to adopt resolution 492 (V) granting Lie a second term of three years. However, the Council’s original recommendation to the Assembly to appoint Lie had contained no mention of the length of the term of office for which the recommendation was valid. Thus, the Assembly members could hold that the Assembly, in extending Lie’s term, was in fact acting on the basis of a Council recommendation, albeit from an earlier time, and thus was in conformity with Article 97. A similar approach at present would not be possible because, since 1976, Council resolutions have consistently specified the term in office for which the recommendation is valid.

 

Relevant to this discussion is the 1948 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on “Conditions of Admission of a State to Membership in the United Nations (Article 4 of the Charter)”. One question the Court was asked by the General Assembly was whether there were any circumstances in which the Assembly could admit a State to UN membership without a recommendation from the Council. The ICJ opined that the Council’s role in making a recommendation was not merely a formality, but a substantive legal requirement under the Charter.

 

It should be noted that the phrase at issue in Article 4 – that the Assembly decides “upon the recommendation of the Security Council” – is the identical phrase used by Article 97 on appointing the Secretary-General. It would be hard to argue that this provision would have a different interpretation in the context of Article 97 than the one given by the 1948 ICJ Advisory Opinion in connection with Article 4. Overall, it is clear that the drafters of Article 97 intentionally established a “dual key” process requiring action by both of the principal organs. While it is true that the process is sequential – with action first required by the Council and then by the Assembly – neither body can be dispensed with.

 

13.  A more activist role for the General Assembly in selecting the appointee

 

The present draft “Revitalization” resolution contains several proposals that would give the General Assembly members greater voice in actually selecting the Secretary-General. These include:

 

• “Concurrently with the Security Council, the President of the General Assembly will conduct an informal straw poll in the General Assembly by secret ballot. The result will be disclosed by the President of the General Assembly only to the President of the Security Council”.

 

• “Before considering and voting upon the recommendation by secret ballot, the General Assembly will conduct an interactive session with any candidate recommended by the Security Council”.

 

• “The Security Council will make a recommendation on a candidate or candidates to the General Assembly” (emphasis added)

 

It should be noted that the General Assembly legally could decide to conduct its own straw polls, as well as to meet with any candidate who has been officially recommended by the Security Council, under its own authority, without needing the Council’s agreement. It is therefore political rather than legal questions which will determine whether or not the Assembly decides to conduct its own straw polls.

 

As mentioned above, in 2016, the results of each round of the Council’s straw polls were instantaneously leaked. It is therefore doubtful that the results of straw polls conducted in the Assembly would remain confidential once communicated to the Council President who, it could be expected, would then convey the results to all Council members as relevant to their own decision-making. Therefore, in considering whether or not to include this option in the next “Revitalization” resolution, Assembly members should assume, despite the language of the present proposal, that the results of straw polling in the Assembly would become public.

 

In the event the proposal was adopted, it is possible that one candidate could poll higher in the Assembly than in the Council, or vice versa. One conceivable outcome is that a candidate’s higher polling in the Assembly might convince at least some Security Council members to vote differently in the Council’s subsequent straw polls. On the other hand, it is possible that Assembly straw polls would not influence a significant number of Council members to change course. Thereafter, because, under Article 97, only a candidate officially recommended by the Council can be appointed by the Assembly, a Secretary-General might take office with it being publicly known that he or she had not been the first choice of the wider UN membership, with the concomitant lack of standing this might entail.

 

The draft Assembly resolution raises the possibility that the Council might recommend more than one candidate, thus allowing the Assembly to determine the ultimate incumbent. Charter commentaries have made clear that such a procedure would be allowable under Article 97. However, with at least some P5 known to want the Council to recommend only one nominee, this is not likely to occur in the 2026 appointment process.

 

The Assembly’s 1946 resolution 11(I) stated that “It would be desirable for the Security Council to proffer one candidate only for the consideration of the General Assembly”. Citing this resolution, some have contended that the Assembly, having earlier recommended that the Council forward only one candidate to it, has the present power to change that recommendation, such that the Council should instead forward several names. In this connection, however, it is relevant to note that under Article 10 of the Charter, such an Assembly decision would not be binding on the Council, but only have the status of a recommendation.

 

Concluding observations

 

It is possible that not all of the questions and proposals detailed above may be resolved with respect to the 2026 Secretary-General appointment process. However, given the present upheavals impacting multilateralism, for Member States to retain confidence in the leadership of the United Nations, it is crucial that the next process be experienced, and seen, by governments as having as much credibility as possible.

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Credibility will be essential also for world public opinion which, in the same world context, is likely to be more focused than ever before on the next appointment process. This will especially be the case for those civil society members actively supporting the appointment of the first-ever female Secretary-General, and even more so if the individual ultimately appointed tenth Secretary-General is again male.

 

It will be equally important that the 2026 proceedings be grounded on genuine cooperation between the General Assembly and the Security Council. All UN Member States – represented in both bodies – need to feel that they have been part of the process, and that their views have been taken into account to the maximum extent possible.

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This article is an elaboration of the presentation made by Loraine Sievers at the Workshop on "The Relationship between the General Assembly and the Security Council", co-organized by the Permanent Missions of Ecuador and Portugal to the United Nations together with UNITAR, held on 12 May 2025.

 

(This article supplements pages 404 to 415 of the book.)

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For additional articles on the processes for appointing Secretaries-General, see the Table of Contents for this Section.

See also Table 4 for the dates of the decisions by the Security Council and General Assembly on appointing Secretaries-General.

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[1] This was the case with respect to the 2015 letter.

[2] The final straw poll was held on 5 October 2016.

[3] The only time during those years that the Council adopted a resolution setting out its recommendation to the Assembly was in the unprecedented situation following the death of Dag Hammarskjöld, when the Council recommended the appointment of U Thant as Acting Secretary-General by resolution 168 (1961).

[4] As another measure to prevent determining which representative has cast which vote, it has long been the practice for Security Council members to be provided with identical pens for filling out their ballots.

[5] Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, Uppsala, 1990.

[6] Seven-year terms are relatively rare among government leaders. The Presidents of Armenia, Israel and Kazakhstan serve for a non-renewable seven-year term. The Presidents of Azerbaijan, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Ireland, Italy, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan serve for seven-year terms which are renewable at least once and, in some cases, indefinitely. The President of France served for a seven-year term from 1873 until 2002, when the term in office was changed to five years.