António Guterres

António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres^[a][b] GCC GCL (born 30 April 1949) is a Portuguese politician and diplomat who is serving as the ninth and current secretary-general of the United Nations since 2017. A member of the Portuguese Socialist Party, Guterres served as the prime minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002.

Guterres studied physics and electrical engineering at Lisbon’s Instituto Superior Técnico, briefly taught systems theory and telecommunications, and became involved in politics while active in a Catholic youth group. Guterres served as secretary-general of the Socialist Party from 1992 to 2002. He was elected prime minister in 1995. He led the party to legislative victories in 1995 and 1999. Guterres announced his resignation as Socialist Party leader in 2002 following the party’s losses in the 2001 local elections, with Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues succeeding him while he remained prime minister until losing the subsequent general election to José Manuel Barroso’s Social Democratic Party. Despite this defeat, polling of the Portuguese public in both 2012 and 2014 ranked Guterres the best prime minister of the previous 30 years.^[2][3]

He served as President of the Socialist International from 1999 to 2005. He was the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 2005 to 2015.^[4] He reformed the agency and addressed multiple global refugee crises. Guterres was elected secretary-general in October 2016, succeeding Ban Ki-moon at the beginning of the following year and becoming the first European to hold this office since Kurt Waldheim in 1981. As secretary-general, he has focused on peace, human rights, climate change, refugee protection, and diplomatic engagement with controversial global actors.

He has held numerous advisory, board, and leadership roles in international organizations, foundations, and councils spanning journalism, finance, humanitarian aid, innovation, gender equality, and global policy. Guterres, a multilingual practicing Catholic, was married twice and has two children. He has received numerous national and international honors, honorary doctorates, and prestigious awards recognizing contributions to diplomacy, democracy, and global leadership.

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