Soros Spends Big on Secretary General Campaign

By Diana Banister | 2026

UNITED NATIONS, May 29 (C-Fam) Billionaire philanthropist and political activist George Soros is behind a multi-million dollar campaign to elect a woman as the next Secretary General of the United Nations. The 1 for 8 Billion campaign has been mission focused on promoting the leading candidates, posting online their criteria and lobbying UN member states to support the candidates who will champion feminist ideals that include gender ideology and abortion rights.

Through his Open Society Foundation, Soros seeded the money for the 1 for 8 Billion campaign as well as for a number of its partner Non-Governmental Organizations that include CIVICUS (World Alliance for Citizen Participation), Outright International (formerly the International Gay and Lesbian Rights Commission) and others.

The Secretary General vote is scheduled for July, and the four top candidates include Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Costa Rica’s Rebecca Grynspan, Argentina’s Rafael Mariano Grossi and Macky Sall of Senegal, each of whom was interviewed on April 21-22 before the General Assembly and civil society.

One of the Soros campaign’s criteria for the candidates included: “Will candidates address growing concerns from feminist civil society about anti-gender pushback at local, national, and multilateral levels that is regressing hard-won gains for gender equality, reproductive justice, and the rights of women and girls in all their diversity?”

This “anti-gender pushback” was recently identified at the annual Commission on the Status of Women conference in March when the U.N. Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) held an event, co-sponsored by Finland, Germany, and the United Kingdom, in which they released a report titled “Understanding Backlash Against Gender Equality.”

A policy advisor for UN Women stated that “anti-gender activists have moved from the margins to the center of multilateral spaces.” She suggested that one of the strategies of the “anti-gender” plan is “norm spoiling,” a term referring to the “strategic, coordinated efforts by actors to undermine, weaken, or reverse established international norms, particularly those relating to women’s rights, gender equality, and LGBTQI+ rights,” particularly at the UN.

Bachelet, who served as the first Executive Director of UN Women, gave the 1 for 8 Billion campaign the answers they were looking for: “Bachelet has a substantial track record on gender, youth and civil society inclusion. As President of Chile, she introduced legislation on gender equality, LGBT rights and reproductive rights,” their analysis states.

Although she is on record lobbying against pro-life legislation, Grynspan has been more restrained in addressing gender and reproductive rights. The campaign’s brief analysis of her responses says, “She has highlighted women’s rights and committed to partnerships with civil society.”

Yet, some outside groups have warned that the ideological positions of the two women candidates are the same.

“Do not be deceived by the contrast between Michelle Bachelet and Rebecca Grynspan,” warns Valerie Huber, the founder and president of the Institute for Women’s Health. “Bachelet is the foil; her record so extreme that she exists to make Grynspan appear moderate by comparison.  Both emerge from the same ideological ecosystem that has spent decades replacing the UN’s true mandate with radical agendas that compromise life-saving assistance for women, making abortion the priority while women die from entirely preventable conditions. Both must be vetoed.”

If elected, Bachelet or Grynspan would be the first woman Secretary General in the 81-year history of the global institution. The candidates, however, must first be cleared through the UN Security Council, which requires at least nine votes and no veto from its five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States). Members of Congress have sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio asking him to veto Bachelet’s nomination, and non-profit pro-life groups are voicing their concerns despite being outspent and outmanned by Soros backed groups.

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