Lana Nusseibeh is in the running for UN secretary-general

State Minister Lana Nusseibeh is officially running to be the next UN secretary-general after the UAE formally nominated her, the campaign announced, confirming the Financial Times report we picked up yesterday. She has taken leave from her government post to campaign. If she gets the seat, she would be the second secretary-general from the Arab world, after Egypt’s Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who held the post from 1992 to 1996.

BACKGROUND- Nusseibeh was the UAE’s permanent representative to the UN from September 2013 to April 2024, the first woman in the role. She has also been a vice-president of the General Assembly and president of the Executive Board of UN Women. She joined the Foreign Ministry in 2009, serving as director of policy planning and special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. She has also been one of the UAE’s most prominent voices abroad throughout the war this year, along with presidential diplomatic adviser Anwar Gargash.

She joins a race that has failed to produce a frontrunner. Six rounds of Security Council voting have failed to produce a candidate acceptable to all five permanent members, the latest a straw poll on 16 October. She is a late entrant and the seventh candidate, up against Rebeca Grynspan, the UN trade and development chief who has led in straw polls, and IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi.

Her pitch is independence and getting results. In her vision statement, she promises “no exemptions for friends and no grudges against critics.” She would put quiet diplomacy and achievable “first agreements” — such as local truces, prisoner exchanges, and humanitarian corridors — at the center of the UN’s peace work and require every major Secretariat program to report what it achieved against what it cost.

She also wants the UN to work more closely with investors. She says she would work with development banks and private-sector partners to give investors better data, so they can assess risk more accurately and bring down the cost of capital where risk is overstated. She also promises to push for fairer debt solutions and blended finance with philanthropies and businesses, measured in capital mobilized and jobs delivered.

IN CONTEXT- She would take over a UN under severe financial pressure. The General Assembly approved a USD 3.45 bn operating budget for 2026, down from USD 3.72 bn the year before, and the UN80 reform initiative launched to cope with the shortfall involved relocating staff and thousands of job cuts. Most of the gap is down to its biggest funder: the US stopped paying its UN contributions altogether in 2025 and ended most of its voluntary funding to UN agencies.

What’s next: The 15-member Security Council must recommend a candidate, and the General Assembly then appoints them. Guterres’ second term ends on 31 December.