UN secretary general race: UAE's Lana Nusseibeh enters as late contender to succeed Guterres
Lana Nusseibeh, the UAE's ambassador to the UN, has joined the un secretary general race as a late contender to succeed António Guterres, who steps down at the end of the year.
UN secretary general race: UAE's Lana Nusseibeh enters as late contender to succeed Guterres
Lana Nusseibeh, the Emirati diplomat who serves as UAE ambassador to the UN, has entered the un secretary general race as a late contender to succeed António Guterres. Her entry comes with the security council still unable to settle on a successor and Guterres due to stand down at the end of the year.
Endorsements built on Gaza aid work
Nusseibeh arrives in the contest with backing tied to her record as UAE ambassador to the UN, where she helped secure the delivery of gaza humanitarian aid. She has won the endorsement of the state of Palestine, and is widely noted for her advocacy of the Palestinian cause and the two state solution.
- Brett McGurk, a top national security adviser in the Biden administration, backed her for her work on Gaza.
- Nickolay Mladenov, the Bulgarian diplomat who heads Donald Trump's Gaza Board of Peace, has also endorsed her.
McGurk said: "She would be an inspired choice for this impossible job."
Mladenov said Nusseibeh "has always understood that the UN works when someone is willing to systematically build the bridges nobody else wants to build", adding: "She now has the chance to take that same spirit and ethos to the UN secretariat."
Her own vision statement argues: "At the heart of the UN sits a wager: that states will give up a little today to gain a great deal together over time."
Criticism over Sudan and the Rapid Support Forces
The candidacy has drawn criticism over the UAE's contested role in arming the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, a group that two successive US administrations have accused of genocide. Nusseibeh has been among the leading UAE diplomats denying reports that the UAE supplied weapons to RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan "Hemedti" Dagalo despite a UN arms sales ban. She denied the UAE provided any "military, logistical, financial or political support to any faction in Sudan"; the UAE says it supports the formation of a civilian-led government in Sudan.
Human rights activists have mounted a fierce backlash, citing the UAE's domestic human rights record and its alleged funding of the RSF, which is responsible for killing thousands, including in the capture of El Fasher in October last year. A January 2024 report by a UN panel of experts described allegations, including arms being smuggled into the RSF from the UAE, as credible.
One of the strongest attacks on her candidacy has come from Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, over her denials of UAE support to factions in Sudan. The regional bloc CELAC, which groups the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, has written to the security council to object as well. In its letter, it argues that when Nusseibeh declared her candidacy, support had been building for the next secretary general to come from its part of the world.
A wide-open contest after six rounds
Nusseibeh justified her late entry by saying the security council appears close to deadlock on the six remaining candidates. Six rounds of voting have produced no clear lead, the latest on 16 October. That un security council straw poll was the first to reveal whether any of the five permanent members objected to a candidate, and it ended with Rebeca Grynspan of Costa Rica holding the lead spot.
Grynspan's position is far from secure: she has support from nine security council members and objections from five, including two unidentified permanent members.
The remaining candidates besides Grynspan and Nusseibeh are:
- Rafael Grossi, the Argentine diplomat
- Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, the UN envoy from Guyana
- Olara Otunnu of Uganda
- María Fernanda Espinosa, Ecuador's former foreign minister
Two previously declared candidates have pulled out of the race.
Who is Lana Nusseibeh
Nusseibeh was born in 1978 in Abu Dhabi and studied at Cambridge University. Her family is Palestinian: her father, Zaki, moved to Abu Dhabi after the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 left him unable to go back to Jerusalem, where he was born. Among her relatives is her uncle Sari Nusseibeh, the Palestinian intellectual who wrote Once Upon a Country.
Guterres is due to stand down at the end of the year, with no candidate yet holding a clear lead after six rounds of voting.
