Rebeca Grynspan, a Costa Rican diplomat and current head of UNCTAD (the UN Conference on Trade and Development), has taken a strong early lead in the race to succeed António Guterres as UN secretary general when his term ends in December 2026. In the security council's first informal straw poll, Grynspan received ten "encourage" votes and only one "discourage" vote among the fifteen council members, placing her ahead of six other candidates including Guyana's former UN envoy, Carolyn Rodrigues-Burkett. If elected, Grynspan — a former vice-president of Costa Rica whose parents were Holocaust refugees from Poland — would be both the first woman and the first Jewish person to lead the United Nations, with a final decision expected by October.