Five candidates have been presented by FAO Member Countries for the post of FAO Director-General to be elected in June 2019, the agency announced today.
Election for the agency’s top leadership post with a four-year term of office starting on August 2019 will take place at the 41st Session of FAO’s Conference (Rome, 22-29 June 2019), the highest governing body of the Organization.
The deadline for nominations was Thursday, 28 February 2019.
The candidates
The five candidates, each nominated by his/her government, are listed in alphabetical order by country: Médi Moungui (Cameroon), Qu Dongyu (China), Catherine Geslain-Lanéelle (France), Davit Kirvalidze (Georgia) and Ramesh Chand (India).
Members will cast their vote on a one country-one vote basis in a secret ballot which requires a simple majority for a valid outcome.
The next Director-General of FAO will be appointed for the period 1 August 2019 to 31 July 2023. The Director-General will be eligible for only one additional mandate of four years.
The new Director-General will succeed José Graziano da Silva, who was first elected in 2011 and has served two consecutive terms.
Since the establishment of FAO in 1945, there have been eight Directors-General:
- Sir John Boyd Orr, United Kingdom, 1945-1948
- Norris E. Dodd, United States, 1948-1954
- Philip Vincent Cardon, United States, 1954-1956
- Binay Ranjan Sen, India, 1956-1967
- Addeke Hendrik Boerma, Netherlands, 1968-1975
- Edouard Saouma, Lebanon, 1976-1993
- Jacques Diouf, Senegal, 1994-2011
- José Graziano da Silva, Brazil, 2011-2019
