UAE diplomat eyes U.N.’s top job

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AFP) — An Emirati official with Palestinian roots, Lana Nusseibeh has emerged as a late frontrunner in the race to lead the United Nations (UN), campaigning on a reformist agenda and vowing to work for peace.

Since her official nomination on Wednesday, she has already garnered the backing of Gulf states but also faced scrutiny over her country’s normalization with Israel and Abu Dhabi’s alleged role in Sudan’s war.

If she succeeds, she would be the first woman and the second Arab to snatch the job in what would be a tour de force for the UAE, a Middle East power that was under Iranian attack earlier this year.

In a campaign video, she vows if elected to “bring greater urgency to the work for peace” and “defend human rights,” speaking in perfect English with a slight British accent.

The long-haired brunette, 48, sporting a red suit, projects the image of a modern Arab woman, one that her country has long sought to portray.

“Lana Nusseibeh has a thick CV,” said Emirati political science academic Abdulkhaleq Abdulla. “She brings in the best of the UAE’s diplomacy.”

She stepped down from her post as state minister at the foreign ministry and as envoy to the UN and European Union to campaign for the top UN job.

A seasoned diplomat, she has also served as the UAE’s permanent representative to the UN, from 2013 to 2024, the first woman to hold the post.

Nickolay Mladenov, the high representative for Gaza under a United States-backed “Board of Peace,” said Nusseibeh “does not give up when the room gets difficult.”

“She is relentless, but never in a way that overwhelms people,” he said.

Palestinian roots

Nusseibeh comes from a prominent Palestinian family of statesmen, uprooted by the creation of Israel in 1948.

Her family traditionally held the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the walled Old City of Jerusalem.

Yet she has defended the Abraham Accords, under which the UAE normalized ties with Israel in 2020, drawing criticism from pro-Palestinian activists and commentators on social media.

Her grandfather was defense minister in Jordan in the 1950s and one of the first Palestinians to be in contact with the Israelis, while her father Zaki Nusseibeh was an adviser and interpreter to the UAE’s late founding president Sheikh Zayed.