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THE UN is often accused of meddling, only to be called upon when disaster strikes—and then blamed for not stepping in sooner. Sometimes the sneering is deserved. The UN is unwieldy, and hamstrung by big-power rivalries and small-power greed. Yet it matters. It is often the only outfit that can get combatants round a table and go into the most dangerous places. That can make the difference between life and death.

So it matters, too, who is the UN’s secretary-general. The job was described by the first to hold it as the “most impossible…on this earth”. Yet the person in charge can affect the lives of some of the world’s least fortunate, which is why the next incumbent must be the best on offer (see article).

The idea has taken hold that a woman should get the job, because none has done it before; and that she should be from eastern Europe, because that part of the world has never had the honour. Several eastern European women qualify as candidates. But if one of them succeeds it should be because of her ability, rather than her gender or her home country.

Whoever is chosen will have to tackle grave problems. The UN is bloated, seemingly unaccountable, dogged by bureaucracy and tangled in institutional rivalries. Its main aims—to make peace, to save the poor through economic development and to promote human rights—should reinforce each other, but are often opposed. Too many subsidiary agencies and programmes overlap and should be closed down. America and other rich countries pay more than they should. Countries that were once poor or supplicant, such as China and India, pay too little. Too many jobs, at the top and bottom, are handed out by regional bargaining rather than merit. Too few people are fired. Sexual abuse by peacekeepers and corruption in procurement have been dealt with too lightly. The secretary-general is, among other things, the “chief administrative officer”. The organisation needs a good kicking.

But his—or her—biggest challenge is to stop people killing each other. The UN has 16 peacekeeping missions across the world. Often they are devilishly hard, as in Congo, where peacekeeping is undercut by local politics and corruption (see article). The task has grown because the UN’s responsibility to protect civilians, enshrined in 2005 through the good office of the secretary-general of the day, Kofi Annan, means that it can intervene in conflicts within countries as well as those between them. This responsibility was invoked in 2011 over Libya, prompting grumbles, especially from Russia, that the Western sponsors of action there were stretching the mandate. This, in turn, has prevented the UN from agreeing to act more robustly over Syria.

Miracle-workers please apply

The outgoing secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, whose term finishes at the end of this year, is widely regarded as a failure in both administration and governance. In his defence, he has tried to streamline the multiplicity of UN bodies, for instance welding four agencies promoting women’s rights into one. He is credited with overseeing a climate-change deal in December in Paris and a global agreement on development goals a few months earlier. Moreover, no secretary-general can weave magic in places like Syria if the world’s main powers are at loggerheads, as America has been with Russia. But whereas Mr Annan used a mixture of cunning, courage, charm and idealism to bring antagonists together and pick up the pieces after disasters such as Iraq, Mr Ban has been plodding, protocol-conscious and loth to stand up to the big powers.

Whoever succeeds him will find the job hard enough. A Bulgarian front-runner, Irina Bokova, was a diplomat for the former communist regime; America may object. If she bows out another Bulgarian, Kristalina Georgieva, the EU’s respected budget boss, would be better.

But it makes sense to spread the net as wide as possible. What about António Guterres, a former UN commissioner for refugees, or Helen Clark, who leads the development programme? Both are successful ex-prime ministers (of Portugal and New Zealand), who have run their UN briefs well: Ms Clark was undiplomatic, and brave, in pruning staff and budgets. Other candidates may appear. Most tantalising is Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor—and, as it happens, an eastern European woman—though few think she would exchange her present burden for one in the UN’s New York headquarters. If she did, The Economist would be glad to endorse her.