For years, Lana Nusseibeh was the face of the UAE at the UN in New York. She served as the country's Permanent Representative for over 10 years, becoming a strong diplomatic force for the UAE on the world stage.
Now, she has announced her candidacy to become the next UN Secretary General after being formally nominated by the UAE. Nusseibeh is a late entrant into the race and has now become one of seven candidates eyeing the top role at the United Nations.
Her candidacy comes following the Security Council’s latest straw poll on October 16, held as part of the process to select a successor to António Guterres, whose second term ends on December 31, 2026. That poll showed that none of the seven candidates has the support of all five permanent members of the UN Security Council, all of whom have veto power.
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In her vision statement, she said she has taken a leave of absence from her post as a Minister of State in the UAE's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She said she wants to serve in the UN role while "speaking frankly with every government and answering to none."
Nusseibeh also referenced her two young boys, saying they have taught her more about patience and urgency than any negotiation. She describes herself as a "stubbornly optimistic, relentless diplomat."
Here is a look at her life and career:
Her family
Hailing from an illustrious family, politics has been an integral part of her life. Her grandfather, Anwar Nusseibeh, was a well-known Palestinian politician who held several ministerial posts in Jordan's government and was its ambassador to Britain in the 1960s.
Her father Zaki Nusseibeh was a companion of Sheikh Zayed, the UAE's founding father and has been an active contributor to the UAE government for over 50 years. Currently he is the Cultural Advisor to the President of the UAE and the Chancellor of UAE University.
Study and early career
She studied history at the University of Cambridge, then earned a master's degree in Israeli and Jewish Diaspora Studies at SOAS, University of London. Her early jobs included a stint as a Unesco consultant in Paris and a post as an analyst at the Gulf Research Centre.
More than a decade at the UN
Nusseibeh was the UAE's Permanent Representative to the UN from September 2013 to April 2024. Here are some of the key moments of her tenure:
She chaired the Executive Board of UN Women and served as a Vice President of the General Assembly in 2017.
She co-chaired talks on reforming the Security Council from 2017 to 2019.
During the UAE's 2022-2023 Security Council term, she helped drive Resolution 2720, which laid the groundwork for a UN system to speed up aid to Gaza.
When she left New York, Mohamed Abushahab took over as the UAE's UN ambassador. She called her time there "the honour of a lifetime."
Upon completing her tenure, she returned to Abu Dhabi and became a Minister of State in September 2025.
Her plan for the UN
Nusseibeh says her career has been about helping people reach agreement in rooms where it was called impossible.
Here are some of her goals for the UN:
Peace: In a bid to achieve lasting peace, she wants to start by focusing on small first agreements, such as local truces, prisoner swaps and aid corridors, because they show each side can keep its word. She has also promised quiet diplomacy to stop disputes from growing. She will also ask the Security Council to judge every peacekeeping mission by when it can safely leave.
Development: According to her, the UN development system is ready for recalibration as economic power has shifted and countries today have increasingly sophisticated development strategies and greater means to pursue them. Her plans include putting jobs at the centre of development work, pushing for fairer debt solutions, and working more closely with banks, charities and businesses. She also wants to help countries agree on the goals that will follow the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
Human rights, technology and climate: She promises to defend international law, the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, without double standards. On artificial intelligence, she backs voluntary steps such as shared incident reporting and shared safety tests. She also wants the countries that use AI but do not build it to have a fair say. She calls climate change a priority and says young people should be put where decisions are made.
Efficiency: In her words, Member States will invest in a UN that can show returns. She would make programmes report results against costs, merge overlapping work and be open with governments about unpaid dues. She also promises staff clear purpose, rewards for results and protection in danger.
Nusseibeh enters a contest that will be decided behind closed doors in the Security Council, where the five permanent members hold veto power. The next straw polls, expected in the coming weeks, will be the first test of her bid.