Emirati diplomat could become next UN chief despite human rights concerns

The United Arab Emirates has nominated Lana Nusseibeh for United Nations secretary-general, according to a report from the state-owned Emirates News Agency. Nusseibeh, the minister of state in the UAE's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and her country’s first female ambassador to the UN, has been rumoured to be a potential candidate for months. She joins six other candidates vying to be the UN's next top diplomat.

The news agency wrote: “His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates, submitted the nomination” as required as part of the UN secretary-general selection process. He is quoted as citing “Nusseibeh’s deep experience of the United Nations, her judgement in addressing the ongoing international challenges, and her record of constructive work”.

The office of the president of the General Assembly would not confirm whether the required documentation for Nusseibeh’s nomination has been received, saying that Khalilur Rahman, who presides over the current session of the Assembly, is travelling. Yet FRANCE 24 and PassBlue received a separate email from Teneo, a New York-based public relations company for the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, confirming Nusseibeh’s nomination.

“I’m reaching out following today’s announcement of HE Lana Nusseibeh’s candidacy for UN Secretary-General,” Jan Hromadko, the managing director of Teneo, wrote in the email, enclosing Nusseibeh’s vision statement.

In the statement, Nusseibeh wrote, in part, “The Charter gives the Secretary-General no army and no vote. But the position, held well, entails a different kind of power. Her independence empowers her to bring others to agreement, and that depends on trust. I will be the stubbornly optimistic, relentless diplomat I have always been in this endeavour. ... There will be no exemptions for friends and no grudges against critics.”

Nusseibeh added that she had taken “a leave of absence” from her government position to focus on her candidacy. The term of current Secretary-General Antonio Guterres ends on December 31, 2026, so UN member states must decide on a successor by then.

Nusseibeh, born in 1978, entered the race late but as a well-known name in international circles from her time as the UAE's UN ambassador from 2013 to 2024 coupled with her country’s strong ties to the United States, a permanent member of the Security Council. 

Still, as a candidate, she will need to win the four other veto-wielding permanent members – Britain, China, France and Russia – to her corner and defend her candidacy as UN secretary-general against Abu Dhabi’s controversial human rights records and role in the Sudan war.

A candidate needs at least nine votes from the 15-member Security Council – and not to be vetoed by a permanent, or "P5", member, as they are called. A former diplomat from the global South told PassBlue/FRANCE 24 that Nusseibeh would not have jumped into the race at this point if she didn’t think the P5 were agreeable to her nomination.

“Her rollout has been pretty slick, and UN insiders assume that she will have squared away the veto powers before going public. It feels like it may be a coronation,” said Richard Gowan from the International Crisis Group.

Human rights black marks

As a candidate, Nusseibeh will undoubtedly face scrutiny about the Emirates’ human rights record both in the country and beyond. Human Rights Watch’s 2026 report on the UAE describes severe restrictions on expression, association and assembly in the country, among other detailed criticisms.

Nusseibeh’s father is of Palestinian origin, yet her country has grown close to Israel in the last few years. They were one of the first Middle Eastern powers to join the Abraham Accords. 

Nusseibeh was seen as having supported Palestinian civilians’ need for humanitarian aid during Israel’s blockages of food and other essentials in Gaza when she represented the UAE in the Security Council from 2022-2023.

Johnnie Moore, an American evangelical preacher and the former head of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, celebrated her candidacy on X, calling Nusseibeh “one of the only diplomats in the world who could get through the Security Council under present circumstances”.

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Brett McGurk, who served in the Biden administration as a top national security adviser, tweeted on Oct. 21: “How did UAE become the largest global provider of humanitarian aid to Gaza, according to UN data? Because of Lana Nusseibeh – a diplomat who knows everyone and works with them to GSD (Get S*** Done). She would be an inspired choice for this impossible job.” 

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Aspects of the UAE’s geopolitics, however, draw scorn not only from an array of human rights groups but also from nongovernmental organisations focusing on conflicts and humanitarian crises.

Nathaniel Raymond, the executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, said that if Nusseibeh becomes UN boss, it could be a “catastrophe” for the UN’s work in Sudan, Yemen and elsewhere in the Mideast and North Africa.

“She has a dual loyalty, conflict of interest, between the United Nations and a state which is credibly accused by the UN itself of directly aiding and abetting the massacre of El Fasher, which the UN itself has determined has the ‘hallmarks of genocide’,” Raymond said about Sudan.

Watch moreThe fall of El-Fasher: A turning point in Sudan's brutal civil war?

In Sudan, the UAE has been accused by UN independent panels of experts of arming and funding the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), who are fighting the government army Sudanese Armed Forces. Amnesty International reported in May 2025 that Chinese-guided bombs and howitzers used by the RSF were re-exported by the Emirates, breaching the arms embargo on Darfur.

The Emirati government rejected the findings and denied supplying weapons or military support to either side. Separately, the International Court of Justice dismissed Sudan’s case against the Emirates for lack of jurisdiction but did not resolve the underlying allegations.

“Next week is the one-year anniversary of El Fasher,” Raymond added. “The UN should not celebrate it by making a government official – of the country that made the massacre militarily possible – the SG of the United Nations.”

Latin Americans on the edge

The selection process of the next secretary-general began officially about a year ago to find a successor to Guterres, a former Portuguese prime minister. As part of the procedure, the Council recommends a candidate to the General Assembly for final approval.

The current candidates have all gone through public hearings held by the 193-member General Assembly as well as numerous informal straw polls conducted by the Security Council. An early candidate, Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s two-time former president, could not recover from US criticism of her advocacy for women’s rights. She dropped out in late September.

Guyana’s Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett, in second place, is having to defend her government’s position on the Gaza war while assuring the Council (mostly, the US) that Guyana’s stance – that Israel has been defying international law in the conflict – would not influence her decisions if she is selected secretary-general. She’s finding that conversation hard to balance.

In the series of six straw polls held by the Council, none of the candidates have drawn consensus from the members. The top three (Rebeca Grynspan of Costa Rica, Rodrigues Birkett and Rafael Mariano Grossi of Argentina) each drew two “discourage” votes from a P5 member in the latest October 16 poll, yet the results do not imply an end to their candidacies, some experts say. They suggest, however, that the nominees must do more negotiating to overcome the initial “red cards”, as one diplomat put it.

Nusseibeh’s nomination gives the Council, particularly the P5, another option while adding a fourth woman to the race. The UN has never had a woman secretary-general, an 81-year gap that this contest was supposed to rectify, according to a General Assembly resolution.

The race was also meant to be the the Latin America-Caribbean region's unofficial turn to clinch the leadership post. Nusseibeh and another candidate, Olara Otunnu of Uganda, throw off that potential. (Macky Sall of Senegal recently dropped out of the race.)

Ricard Moscoso, deputy permanent representative of Panama (a Council member) has been vocal about his region’s turn, tweeting recently, “The veto wielding powers may not care, but any other new candidate will have to go through a round of colour coded plus the General Assembly public scrutiny in the dialogues and Council Informal dialogues.” (The colour-coded ballots started in the October 16 poll, revealing “discourage” and “encourage” votes from P5 members.)

A straw poll that was expected to occur on Friday, October 23, was postponed to possibly next week to give the UAE time to submit Nusseibeh’s nomination, sources told FRANCE 24 and PassBlue. But diplomats will expect Nusseibeh to take part in a General Assembly interactive dialogue before the Council holds its next straw poll. 

Rahman, the General Assembly's current president, has also apparently different modalities in mind for upcoming interactive dialogues than the previous ones.

“The president of the Assembly has reiterated his pledge that any new candidate who may emerge will be introduced to the wider UN membership, in line with the relevant revitalisation resolutions,” Melissa Summers, Rahman’s spokesperson, told FRANCE 24 and PassBlue in an email on October 21.

The other candidates are Olara Otunnu, a former UN official from Uganda; María Fernanda Espinosa, an ex-General Assembly president from Ecuador; and Ivonne A-Baki, a politician from Ecuador.