Bangladeshi Candidate narrowly elected UN General Assembly President in contested vote

Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman was elected the 81st president of the United Nations General Assembly on June 4, 2026. He defeated Cyprus’s Ambassador Andreas Kakouris in a secret ballot, securing 99 votes to Kakouris’s 91 out of 190 ballots cast with no invalid votes or abstentions.

Rahman will assume office when the 81st UNGA session opens on September 8, 2026, and will serve a one-year term.

The presidency rotates among the UN’s five regional groups, and the 81st session falls to the Asia Pacific group. Rahman joined Bangladesh’s foreign service in 1979 and served as first secretary at the Permanent Mission of Bangladesh to the UN between 1986 and 1991.

He held senior UN positions in New York and Geneva, including as spokesperson for the Least Developed Countries and special adviser to the UN Conference on Trade and Development.

Rahman became foreign minister in February 2026 after the Bangladesh Nationalist Party won Bangladesh’s first election since the 2024 student-led uprising that ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. He previously served as national security adviser and high representative on the Rohingya issue in the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus.

“The UN will commence its ninth decade at a time when trust in our organisation is being tested on multiple fronts,” Rahman told diplomats at the UNGA as he accepted the role.

Outgoing UNGA President Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, said the UN faces “not only headwinds, but immense pressure” and that consensus is increasingly difficult to achieve. “The role of the president of the General Assembly is no longer simply procedural,” she said.

” The last contested UNGA presidential election occurred in 2016, when Fijian diplomat Peter Thomson defeated Cyprus’s candidate by four votes.

The UNGA presidency is normally chosen by acclamation. On June 4, 2026, the UNGA also elected Austria, Kyrgyzstan, Portugal, Trinidad and Tobago, and Zimbabwe to the 15-member UN Security Council for two-year terms beginning January 1, 2027. Germany failed to win a seat.

The UN has 193 member states. The UN Security Council has five permanent veto-wielding members: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Antonio Guterres’s term as UN Secretary-General expires at the end of 2026.