António Guterres | Biography (2024)

António Guterres (born April 30, 1949, Lisbon, Portugal) is a Portuguese politician and diplomat who served as prime minister of Portugal (1995–2002) and secretary-general of the United Nations (2017– ).

Guterres studied physics and engineering at the Universidade de Lisboa’s elite Instituto Superior Técnico, earning a degree in 1971. His time as a student was marked by the decline of the dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar, and Guterres was active in the protest movement that helped to topple Salazar’s successor, Marcello Caetano, in 1974. After graduating, Guterres worked as a physics instructor, but, as Portugal began its transition to democracy, he became more active in politics. He joined the Socialist Party in 1974, and two years later he was elected to the Portuguese parliament. Over the next two decades, he served on a variety of parliamentary committees, and, from 1981 to 1983, he was a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

In 1992 he was elected secretary-general of the Socialist Party, and in 1995 he was elected prime minister of Portugal at the head of a minority government. During his term Guterres oversaw Portugal’s transition to the euro as its official currency and presided over the transfer of Macau to Chinese sovereignty. He also played a key role in the resolution of the crisis in East Timor (Timor Leste); the former Portuguese colony had been under Indonesian occupation since 1975 and Guterres was a prominent advocate for Timorese independence. After the Socialists were soundly beaten in local elections in December 2001, Guterres resigned, and in early legislative elections held in March 2002, the Socialists were swept from power. In 2005 the UN General Assembly elected Guterres to serve as the High Commissioner for Refugees. He increased efficiency at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), reducing staff and costs at its Geneva headquarters while improving the organization’s response capabilities. Such steps were clearly necessary at a time when conflicts were displacing populations at a level not seen since World War II, and Guterres used his position to encourage rich countries to do more to aid the world’s refugees.

On October 13, 2016, the United Nations General Assembly elected Guterres to serve as UN secretary-general. After six rounds of straw polling among the 15 members of the Security Council, Guterres emerged from a crowded field that included former Slovenian president Danilo Turk and former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark. Of the 13 candidates, 7 were women, and many believed that the Security Council would make history by nominating its first female secretary-general. Guterres was the clear front-runner, however, and in the final vote the typically fractious Security Council found rare consensus, with 13 votes in favour of Guterres and 2 abstentions, with none opposed. On December 12 he took the oath of office and was sworn in as the ninth secretary-general in UN history, succeeding South Korea’s Ban Ki-Moon. Guterres’s term began on January 1, 2017.