UAE Diplomat Lana Nusseibeh Joins Race to Succeed Guterres as UN Secretary General

Lana Nusseibeh, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United Nations, has become a late contender to replace António Guterres as secretary general. She is credited with helping secure the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Nusseibeh, 48, is of Palestinian heritage and is widely known for championing the Palestinian cause and the two-state solution. The state of Palestine has endorsed her bid. She was born in Abu Dhabi in 1978 and educated at Cambridge University. Her father, Zaki, had settled in the UAE after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war made it hard for him to return to his birthplace, Jerusalem. She is the niece of Sari Nusseibeh, a prominent Palestinian intellectual who wrote the book Once Upon a Country.

She has defended her late entry, which had been widely expected, by pointing to an apparent near-deadlock in the Security Council. Six rounds of voting have failed to give any of the six remaining candidates a clear lead, the most recent round taking place on 16 October.

That latest straw poll was the first to show whether any of the five permanent Security Council members objected to a candidate. Rebeca Grynspan of Costa Rica finished on top, with support from nine of the 15 council members. She also drew objections from five, including two unidentified permanent members, which weakens her claim to be a consensus choice. Guterres is due to leave office at the end of the year.

The other candidates are Argentine diplomat Rafael Grossi, Guyana's UN envoy Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, veteran Ugandan diplomat Olara Otunnu and Ecuador's former foreign minister María Fernanda Espinosa. Two earlier declared candidates have withdrawn.

The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, known as CELAC, has sent a letter of objection to the Security Council. It argues that Nusseibeh's entry came just as consensus was forming around the post going to someone from its region.

In her vision statement, Nusseibeh described the UN as resting on a wager that states will give up a little now to gain much more together over time. She said countries still need partnerships but no longer trust that cooperation pays off enough, and that rebuilding that trust through faster, more certain and more realistic results is the organization's task.

Brett McGurk, a former senior national security adviser in the Biden administration, backed her for her Gaza work. He said the UAE became the largest global provider of humanitarian aid to Gaza, according to UN data, because of a diplomat who "knows everyone and works with them." Nickolay Mladenov, the Bulgarian diplomat who leads Donald Trump's Gaza Board of Peace, said she has always understood that the UN works when someone is willing to build bridges nobody else wants to build.

Human rights activists have pushed back strongly, citing the UAE's domestic rights record and its alleged funding of the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan. The group is blamed for killing thousands of people, including during the capture of El Fasher in October last year. Two successive US administrations have accused it of genocide. A January 2024 report by a UN panel of experts called allegations from sources in Chad and Darfur, including arms smuggling from the UAE to the group, credible.

Nusseibeh has been among the leading UAE diplomats denying that the country supplied weapons to RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, in breach of a UN arms embargo. Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, has been among her sharpest critics over her denial of any military, logistical, financial or political support to any faction in Sudan. The UAE says it backs the formation of a civilian-led government there.