The 192-nation UN General Assembly has unanimously approved a second five-year term for UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon.
The former South Korean foreign minister, who took over from Kofi Annan in 2007, was re-elected to the position, with his second term due to start from January 1st, 2012.
Mr Ban (67) was unopposed, making his re-election a virtual certainty after the Security Council last week recommended he continue at the helm of the United Nations.
He thanked the UN member states for the "great honour" they bestowed on him.
"I am humbled by your trust and enlarged by our sense of common purpose," he said.
US ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice welcomed Mr Ban's re-election to the post and praised his performance in "one of the toughest jobs in the world."
"No one understands the burdens of this role better than he," she said, adding that Washington was "grateful that he is willing to take them on."
All the regional groups of UN member states backed Mr Ban, including the Latin American and Caribbean group, the last to officially endorse his re-election.
Under an unwritten UN rule, the job of secretary-general rotates between the world's regions and may not be held by a citizen of one of the five permanent Security Council members - the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China.
It is normal for an incumbent to serve two five-year terms, although Egypt's Boutros Boutros-Ghali was ousted after one term in 1996 by the United States, which felt he had performed poorly over the war in Bosnia.
Despite a run-in with Moscow over Kosovo in 2008 that UN diplomats say elicited a threat to veto his second term, Mr Ban worked hard to avoid upsetting the council's five veto powers.
Reuters