secretary-general

secretary-general, the principal administrative officer of the United Nations. See Secretariat.

The table provides a historical list of UN secretaries-general.

Secretaries-general of the United Nations

	name	country of origin	period of service
*Acting secretary-general from Nov. 3, 1961.
	Trygve Lie	Norway	Feb. 1, 1946–April 10, 1953
	Dag Hammarskjöld	Sweden	April 10, 1953–Sept. 18, 1961
	U Thant*	Myanmar (Burma)	Nov. 30, 1962–Dec. 31, 1971
	Kurt Waldheim	Austria	Jan. 1, 1972–Dec. 31, 1981
	Javier Pérez de Cuellar	Peru	Jan. 1, 1982–Dec. 31, 1991
	Boutros Boutros-Ghali	Egypt	Jan. 1, 1992–Dec. 31, 1996
	Kofi Annan	Ghana	Jan. 1, 1997–Dec. 31, 2006
	Ban Ki-Moon	South Korea	Jan. 1, 2007–Dec. 31, 2016
	António Guterres	Portugal	Jan. 1, 2017–