Lana Nusseibeh, a 48-year-old Emirati diplomat educated at Cambridge University, has announced her candidacy for United Nations secretary general. She enters the race as a late contender following what she describes as a deadlock among the six remaining candidates after six rounds of voting. Her decision to enter comes as the UN Security Council remains unable to establish consensus around any single candidate, with the latest straw poll showing Costa Rican diplomat Rebeca Grynspan holding a narrow lead while facing objections from two unidentified permanent members.
Nusseibeh, who was born in Abu Dhabi in 1978 and is of Palestinian heritage, has built her diplomatic profile significantly through her work as UAE ambassador to the United Nations, where she helped coordinate the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza. She has earned endorsements including support from the state of Palestine and backing from Brett McGurk, who served in the Biden administration as a senior national security adviser. McGurk credited her with making the UAE the world’s largest provider of humanitarian aid to Gaza according to UN data. Additional support has come from Nickolay Mladenov, a Bulgarian diplomat now heading Donald Trump’s Gaza Board of Peace, who praised her bridge-building efforts within the Security Council.
Her candidacy has generated considerable controversy, however, centered on the UAE’s alleged provision of weapons and military support to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces in violation of UN arms embargoes. Nusseibeh has been among leading UAE diplomats publicly denying such allegations. A UN panel of experts report from January 2024 characterized allegations of arms smuggling from the UAE to the RSF as credible based on sources in Chad and Darfur. Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, has mounted particularly strong criticism regarding her denials of UAE military, logistical, financial or political support to Sudanese factions.
The RSF has been accused of genocide by successive US administrations and is responsible for significant casualties in Sudan’s conflict, including in the capture of El Fasher. Beyond concerns over Sudan, Nusseibeh’s candidacy faces broader criticism from human rights activists regarding the UAE’s domestic human rights record. A grouping of Latin American and Caribbean states known as CELAC has also lodged formal objections with the Security Council, contending that her late entry disrupted emerging consensus around their region holding the top UN position. The current UN secretary general António Guterres is scheduled to step down at year’s end.
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