Center for Human Rights and Policy Studies (CHRIPS) and Saferworld

Summary

Nusseibeh frames prevention as the most fundamental form of UN action, and promises to establish a mediation board in her first year. She describes Sudan as the prevention “litmus test” for the next Secretary-General.

Profile

Nusseibeh places prevention at the centre of her vision, calling it the most fundamental and least costly form of UN action. She frames the Secretary-General’s role as one of early engagement before disputes harden, and pursuing incremental agreements as the building blocks of larger settlements.

She favors quiet diplomacy over “podium diplomacy” with a ‘political risk taker for peace’ approach. She has pledged to embolden senior Secretariat leadership to have a “high risk appetite rather than a risk aversion approach” to resolving conflicts. Nusseibeh cites her experience as a Permanent Representative serving on the Security Council, including co-leading Resolution 2681 on Afghan women and girls and 2720 establishing a Gaza humanitarian mechanism, as evidence of her prevention credibility.

Nusseibeh’s most concrete structural proposal is the establishment of a mediation board. This would be a body of “external and internal key drivers” with leverage and contacts, working in parallel with the Secretary-General’s office to “create the space for first actors, for first movers” towards settlement. She has not elaborated on the proposal’s mandate, membership, or relationship to existing DPPA architecture or the Mediation Support Unit ー nor has she explained how it would differ from or complement the Secretary-General’s existing good offices.

She has explicitly mentioned that ending the atrocities and violent conflict in Sudan would be a “litmus test” of any incoming Secretary-General and committed to prioritizing cessation of hostilities, humanitarian access, and a political process reflecting the democratic aspirations of the Sudanese people in her first six months. As part of her prevention agenda, she has committed to supporting “the work of all UN fact-finding missions for accountability and transitional justice.”

On the human rights–prevention nexus, Nusseibeh has committed to using preventive diplomacy, noting that human rights violations are “often a first indicator that violence is

coming.” She has noted that Article 99 and other tools are available for ongoing dialogue with the Security Council. On transnational organized crime, she has endorsed coordination through UNODC and regional organizations, without proposing new structural mechanisms. Areas where Nusseibeh has offered less detail include prevention financing: she has made no comment on the budgets of specific activities, referring instead to demonstrating cost-effectiveness across all three pillars.