Emirati diplomat who helped deliver aid to Gaza enters UN secretary general race

Lana Nusseibeh has Palestine’s endorsement but faces criticism over UAE’s record on human rights and Sudan

An Emirati diplomat who as UAE ambassador to the UN helped secure the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza has entered the race as a late contender to succeed António Guterres as the world body’s secretary general.

Lana Nusseibeh, who is of Palestinian heritage, is widely noted for her advocacy of the Palestinian cause and the two-state solution and has won the endorsement of the state of Palestine.

She is however facing criticism over the UAE’s contested role in arming the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, a group that has been accused of genocide by two successive US administrations.

Nusseibeh, 48, has been one of the leading UAE diplomats denying reports that the UAE supplied weapons to RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo in defiance of a UN arms sales ban.

A grouping of Latin American and Caribbean states, CELAC, has also sent a letter of objection to the security council, claiming her late entry came just as a consensus was emerging behind their region holding the UN top job.

Nusseibeh, who was educated at Cambridge University, was born in 1978 in Abu Dhabi, where her father, Zaki, had emigrated after the Arab-Israeli 1967 war made it difficult for him to return to his birthplace, Jerusalem.

She is the niece of Sari Nusseibeh, a distinguished Palestinian intellectual and author of a widely admired book on Palestine, Once Upon a Country.

She has justified her late – but widely predicted – entry into the race on the grounds that the UN security council appears to be close to deadlock on the six remaining candidates in the race, with no one as yet able to establish a clear lead after six rounds of voting, the latest on 16 October.

The latest straw poll – the first in which it was revealed whether any of the five permanent members of the 15-strong UN security council objected to a candidate – ended with Rebeca Grynspan of Costa Rica holding the lead spot.

But Grynspan faced objections from two unidentified permanent security council members, making it harder for her to claim she is a breakaway consensus candidate. She has support from nine security council members and objections from five. Guterres is due to stand down at the end of the year

Other candidates include: the Argentine diplomat Rafael Grossi; the UN envoy from Guyana, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett; Olara Otunnu, a distinguished veteran Ugandan diplomat; and Ecuador’s former foreign minister María Fernanda Espinosa. Two previously declared candidates have pulled out.

In her vision statement, Nusseibeh said: “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.

“States have not stopped needing to partner with one another, but they no longer trust that cooperation will yield sufficient returns. Rebuilding that trust, with faster, more certain, and more realistic results, is the work of the UN.”

Brett McGurk, who served in the Biden administration as a top national security adviser, backed Nusseibeh for her work on Gaza.

“How did UAE become the largest global provider of humanitarian aid to Gaza, according to UN data? Because of Lana Nussaibeh – a diplomat who knows everyone and works with them … she would be an inspired choice for this impossible job,” he said.

Nickolay Mladenov, the Bulgarian diplomat who heads Donald Trump’s Gaza Board of Peace, said Nusseibeh “has always understood that the UN works when someone is willing to systematically build the bridges nobody else wants to build”.

He added: “In the Security Council [as UAE representative] she did that quietly and consistently and with great professionalism. She now has the chance to take that same spirit and ethos to the UN secretariat.”

But there is a fierce backlash from human rights activists who point to the UAE’s domestic human rights record and its alleged funding of the RSF in Sudan, the group responsible for killing thousands, including in the capture of El Fasher in October last year.

A January 2024 report by the UN panel of experts described allegations from sources in Chad and Darfur – including those of arms being smuggled into the RSF from the UAE – as credible.

One of the strongest attacks on Nusseibeh’s candidacy has been mounted by Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, over her denials of UAE provision of 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.