The process of choosing the next UN secretary-general has stalled. Six anonymous straw polls in the Security Council have produced no clear consensus, and every candidate so far has drawn opposition from the veto-wielding permanent members: the US, UK, France, Russia and China. Into this deadlock, the UAE has inserted a last-minute contender. Earlier this month, Abu Dhabi announced the candidacy of Lana Nusseibeh, a top minister in its foreign office and a former Emirati ambassador to the UN.
The selection machinery itself is well defined. The successful candidate is usually chosen by the 15-member Security Council, before the recommendation is rubber-stamped by the wider General Assembly. Tradition dictates that the role rotates between continents, and many believe a female diplomat from Latin America should hold the position this time. Antonio Guterres, the Portuguese incumbent, completes his 10-year term on 31 December. Whoever takes over inherits an institution where political power rests primarily with the Security Council and the General Assembly, but where the secretary-general retains an important administrative and agenda-setting function as the public face of the organisation.
Nusseibeh’s candidacy has already drawn criticism, much of it centred on her record as the UAE’s UN representative. In that role, she consistently denied Emirati involvement in Sudan’s ongoing civil war, despite considerable evidence of UAE backing for the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group accused of war crimes and other atrocities. Questions have also been raised about the UAE’s relationship with Israel, which has killed at least 74,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023, in what leading human rights organisations and a UN commission have referred to as genocide.
Her platform for the job itself remains vague, which is not unusual given the complex diplomacy candidates must navigate. Her stated priorities would be to “act earlier, bridge divides and pursue practical first agreements”, and to “protect essential aid while helping countries mobilise investment, address debt and shape their own development”. She also discusses defending the UN charter, international law and universal human rights, “consistently and without double standards”. Critics point instead to the UAE’s human rights record, including accusations of unfair detention, torture and widespread exploitation of migrant workers.
Sudan is the file that has attracted the closest scrutiny. Nusseibeh’s UN tenure overlapped with a period in which the UAE developed a far more assertive foreign policy, supporting warring parties in conflicts from Libya to Yemen. The UAE’s role in Sudan, which is subject to a UN arms embargo, has drawn particular attention, with rights organisations and UN investigators criticising its support for the RSF, which the UN says has committed atrocities bearing the “hallmarks of genocide”. In April 2024, Nusseibeh told the Security Council that such allegations were “spurious, unfounded, and lack[ing] any credible evidence”. Her letter described Sudanese concerns about Emirati involvement as “nothing more than an attempt to divert attention” and added that the UAE was “profoundly concerned about the dissemination of disinformation and false narratives”. That same month she left the ambassadorial post to become the UAE’s Assistant Minister for Political Affairs and Envoy of the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
The denials continued. Asked by CNN in July 2024 whether she rejected UN investigators’ findings of “credible” evidence of Emirati support for the RSF, she said: “Absolutely”, calling such allegations “categorically untrue”. In November 2025 she travelled to Strasbourg to lobby the European Parliament to remove references to the UAE’s role in Sudan from an EU resolution condemning atrocities; the UAE was not mentioned in the final text. Sudan’s UN mission, in a statement to Middle East Eye, accused her of “defending and whitewashing her country’s record of troubling the peace of Sudan by enabling genocide, enslaving our women and girls and instigating sexual violence and other atrocities, in addition to destabilising our sovereignty”, adding that “the UAE must face accountability, not to be rewarded with the top global leadership role of the UN”. As secretary-general, Nusseibeh would be bound by the UN Charter to act independently of all governments, including Abu Dhabi’s. But Ammar Mahmoud, a top Sudanese diplomat at the UN, told Middle East Eye that her outright rejection of the investigators’ findings signalled she would not undertake the role with due impartiality. “I highly doubt that she will ever form any investigative committees about the UAE’s role in Sudan,” he said, adding that he did not believe she would accurately reflect, in her engagements with world leaders, the true nature of the conflict in Sudan and her country’s role in it.
Mediating Israel-Palestine would be an immediate demand on the next secretary-general, and here too her record raises questions about her willingness to hold Israeli leaders to account for alleged war crimes in Gaza. Although the UAE has repeatedly voted against Israel at the General Assembly, the two countries have had strong relations since signing the US-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020, a landmark deal championed by Nusseibeh that ended decades of diplomatic boycott. Last week, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a security presentation outlining an “Israel-UAE Hexagon Alliance”, which also appeared to name Sudan’s RSF as a “friendly” party. Abu Dhabi’s official position calls for Palestinian self-determination via the two-state solution, long rejected by Israel. Nusseibeh said in September 2025 that Israel’s formal annexation of the West Bank would be a “red line” for the UAE, and she has promoted the UAE’s role in providing aid to the besieged Gaza Strip. But diplomats who have worked with her suggest the Emirate’s stance is closer to Israel than official statements indicate. “The UAE is totally aligned with Israel,” a European official who sat in on a diplomatic meeting between Nusseibeh and her US counterparts in the summer of 2026 told Middle East Eye, adding that there appeared to be “no limits” to the relationship.
Other regional files shape the picture. In Libya, the UAE has been implicated in war crimes and is accused of backing Khalifa Haftar, whose Libyan Arab Armed Forces controls swathes of the country’s east. Leaked internal Emirati emails from 2015 revealed secret weapons shipments to allies in Libya despite the UN arms embargo, including messages sent directly to Nusseibeh, which critics said showed explicit knowledge of the transfers. UN investigators later found that the UAE, along with Turkey and Jordan, had systematically violated the embargo. Nusseibeh refused to comment. She was also at the centre of the 2017 diplomatic crisis in which the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt cut ties with Qatar, imposing an effective blockade of its land and sea borders; at the UN she rallied support for the measures, describing them as “entirely legal, justified and proportionate”. Relations between Doha and Abu Dhabi have since improved. In Yemen, the UAE backs the Southern Transitional Council, a secessionist movement seeking independence for parts of the south amid Houthi control of the north. That support triggered a major fallout with Saudi Arabia earlier this year after the STC’s failed push to expand its territorial control, though Saudi Arabia and the rest of the GCC have nonetheless backed Nusseibeh’s candidacy.
Her campaign carries further endorsements and positions. Somaliland, the breakaway territory recognised only by Israel, has endorsed her; the UAE has built military bases and port infrastructure there, and the territory wants to join the UN, though final authority over admission rests with the Security Council and the General Assembly. Nusseibeh is yet to state her stance. At the General Assembly in 2025, she offered the UAE’s “full support for Moroccan sovereignty over the Moroccan Sahara”, endorsing “the Autonomy Initiative within the framework of Moroccan territorial integrity”, a plan backed by the UK, US and France but opposed by Algeria, which cut ties with the UAE in September. Morocco claims the region, which the UN recognises as a non-self-governing territory given the competing claims of the indigenous Sahrawi people, led by the Polisario Front.
Whether her candidacy can break the Security Council’s stalemate remains the operative question. The post is open, the timetable is fixed, and the permanent members have blocked every contender so far.