Sudan's top diplomats at the United Nations have asked member states to turn down Lana Nusseibeh's candidacy for UN secretary general, accusing the Emirati foreign minister of "whitewashing" the United Arab Emirates' role in Sudan's civil war.
Nusseibeh entered the race at the last minute on Wednesday and has since emerged as a frontrunner. The Security Council's 15 members remain deadlocked over a successor to Antonio Guterres. Her bid has nonetheless provoked anger over the UAE's alleged backing of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary group whose mass killings UN investigators say bear the "hallmarks of genocide". The UAE denies any involvement.
In a statement given exclusively to Middle East Eye, Sudan's permanent mission to the UN said it had "fundamental questions about Nusseibeh's independence, impartiality and credibility." It accused her of building a career on defending her country's record of undermining peace in Sudan. "The UAE must face accountability, not be rewarded with the top global leadership role of the UN," the mission said.
The statement follows a Middle East Eye report that the United Kingdom is leaning toward supporting Nusseibeh, according to numerous sources close to the British government. Nusseibeh did not respond to a request for comment.
Nusseibeh served as the UAE's ambassador to the UN from 2013 to 2024, with spells in senior foreign ministry posts in between. She has consistently denied Emirati involvement in the conflict. In April 2024 she told the Security Council that such allegations were "spurious, unfounded, and lack[ing] any credible evidence." Three months later, CNN asked whether she rejected the UN investigators' finding of "credible" evidence of Emirati support for the RSF. She answered "Absolutely" and called the claims "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 secretary general is bound by the UN Charter to act independently of all governments. Still, Ammar Mahmoud, a senior Sudanese diplomat at the UN, said her flat rejection of the investigators' conclusions suggested she would lack impartiality. "I highly doubt that she will ever form any investigative committees about the UAE's role in Sudan," he told Middle East Eye. The war began in April 2023 and is estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions more. Sudan accused the UAE of complicity in genocide at the International Court of Justice in March 2025, but the case was dismissed two months later because the UAE had not fully acceded to the Genocide Convention, leaving the court without formal authority to rule.
Questions have also been raised about her capacity to mediate the Israel-Palestine conflict and to hold Israeli leaders to account for alleged war crimes in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians since October 2023. The UAE has repeatedly voted against Israel at the General Assembly, but Abu Dhabi and Israel have kept close ties since the US-brokered Abraham Accords of 2020, a deal Nusseibeh championed. Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented an "Israel-UAE Hexagon Alliance" that also appeared to name the RSF as a "friendly" party.
Nusseibeh, who is of Palestinian heritage, would become the first woman to lead the UN and its second Arab secretary general. Some have pressed for the next officeholder to come from Latin America, in line with conventions on regional rotation. Her entry followed six informal straw polls in which no candidate secured the backing of all five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council: the UK, the US, Russia, China and France.
