The UAE's Lana Nusseibeh called for sweeping reforms at the UN on Tuesday and pledged to take diplomatic risks to secure peace if chosen as the world body's next secretary general.
Speaking at UN headquarters in New York, Ms Nusseibeh said the UN could no longer operate as it had for decades, with shrinking development funding and growing global divisions making it harder to respond to crises. She said it should scale back some of its activities, rethink its spending and focus on delivering results.
“The development assistance of the last 30 years is not returning in the form we knew, and a UN that responds by asking for more will not be heard,” Ms Nusseibeh said at an informal dialogue with members of the UN General Assembly.
“The UN I would lead will be judged by what each country can point to, not by what the system spends.”
Ms Nusseibeh, who said she has taken a leave of absence from her role as minister in the Emirati government, said the world body must recognise its limits and withdraw from areas where other institutions were better placed to act, freeing up resources for humanitarian emergencies and conflict prevention.
“The UN cannot do everything, and the attempt dilutes what it does best,” Ms Nusseibeh said.
Her remarks come at a difficult moment for the UN, which is dealing with financial pressures, declining international aid and deepening divisions among member states over some of the world’s most pressing conflicts. Ms Nusseibeh warned that the international order was becoming increasingly fractured, making effective diplomacy more urgent.
“There are more conflicts today than at any point since this organisation was founded, and the balance between consensus and confrontation is tilting the wrong way,” she said. “The security, prosperity and future we share depend on decisions no country can make alone. But rebuilding the trust that makes those decisions possible is now the central work of the UN.”
Risk and accountability
Ms Nusseibeh said she would take risks for peace if she is chosen, even if she might fail.
“I don’t seek for the office to look for credit in trying. But I think not trying would be a marker of failure,” she said. She said she would be a “political risk taker for peace even if failure seems the likely outcome”.
Asked how she would pursue accountability when a permanent member of the Security Council is the “alleged perpetrator”, Ms Nusseibeh said she would be guided by the UN Charter and international law, including respect for national sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Drawing on her experience negotiating Security Council resolutions on Gaza and Afghanistan, she promised to place greater emphasis on preventing conflicts rather than responding once violence erupts.
“As Secretary General, I will engage early on, before disputes harden into war,” Ms Nusseibeh said.
AI, jobs and a younger generation
The challenges facing the next UN chief, she said, extend well beyond traditional questions of war and peace. Ms Nusseibeh said artificial intelligence, youth unemployment and climate change were among the most consequential issues facing the international community, and warned that technological advances could deepen existing inequalities if governments failed to act collectively.
“Artificial intelligence will be either the great equaliser or the great divider. The choice is ours,” she said.
She also said the UN needed to do a better job of explaining its purpose to younger generations, many of whom have little connection to the hardships of the two world wars that inspired its creation.
“We need to resell the reason why this organisation was created,” she said. “Many young people will not grow up remembering the savagery of the world wars that led to the creation of this organisation, and as a mother and a parent of two young boys, I would not want to see them grow up in a world where we need to make that case again because we have not been able to prevent war in our time again from being resolved.”
She also pledged to defend human rights “with rigour and without double standards”, saying the organisation’s credibility depended on applying its principles fairly and consistently.
The Middle East
On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ms Nusseibeh pledged to pursue a two-state solution in which Israel and Palestine could coexist peacefully, in line with international law and UN resolutions.
She pointed to Security Council resolution 2803, which welcomed the establishment of a Board of Peace and authorised the establishment of a temporary International Stabilisation Force in Gaza, as a framework for moving forward, calling it a rare opportunity for diplomatic progress.
“As Secretary General, I will be committed to pursuing progress on the implementation of these relevant UN resolutions,” she said. “This is an opportunity that we cannot afford to miss.”
Asked what legacy she hoped to leave in the Middle East, she offered a personal reflection, saying that growing up in a region repeatedly scarred by war had shaped her understanding of the consequences of “failed diplomacy and the consequences felt very deeply by people on the ground”.
But Ms Nusseibeh, 48, stressed that her regional background would not determine her priorities.
“I would be a Secretary General for every continent and every conflict and every member state in the room,” she said. “There is no hierarchy of civilians suffering.”
Ms Nusseibeh’s candidacy has received wide support from a number of countries and civil society groups, including Afghan women’s rights groups.
During Tuesday's lengthy question-and-answer session, Ms Nusseibeh answered several questions on the UAE’s alleged involvement in Sudan’s civil war and its purported backing of the Rapid Support Forces, which are fighting the Sudanese military.
Ms Nusseibeh said Sudan is "a litmus test of the success of any incoming secretary general".
"It is a terrible humanitarian catastrophe on the ground, and it urgently needs to move to a cessation of hostilities and a political process for a mediator transition, reflecting the civilian democratic aspirations of the Sudanese people," she told reporters following the council meeting.
The UAE has repeatedly denied claims that it supplied weapons in the war.
