🌎 The Intrigue Power List – United Nations (New York)

Born: 1959
Nationality: 🇯🇲 Jamaican

The UN Secretary-General doesn’t have much formal power, so they largely rely on the gravitas of the role and the pulpit it provides to get things done. This means having an effective chief of staff is critical – someone to take the temperature of the 193 UN members and act as your force multiplier, prioritiser, and gatekeeper. 

Earle Courtenay Rattray, a veteran Jamaican diplomat and former ambassador to China and the UN, has been in this role for two bruising years. His prior decade working around the UN in New York, plus his deep knowledge of China and the developing world – both growing sources of power at the UN – all make him a critical source of counsel to the UN chief.

Born: 1966
Nationality: 🇺🇬 Ugandan

Founded in 1964 at the height of decolonisation, the G77 is the UN’s largest collective of developing countries, with 135 member countries covering 80% of the world’s population.

When they agree, it’s an effective way to channel and coordinate positions on everything from climate change and development to UN staffing and international peace and security. As the relative weight of the developing world grows, the G77 can be an almost unstoppable force at the UN – at least in the General Assembly (see below).

The G77 chair in 2024 is Uganda, whose ambassador in New York is Adonia Ayebare, a journalist by training who’s been working in and around UN HQ since 2005. He knows how the place works and is now one of the G77’s more effective drivers right at a critical time for the international system.

Nationality: 🇦🇪 Emirati

The UAE has positioned itself at the centre of an intriguing Venn diagram: it hosts a US military base, yet also hosted a rare visit abroad by Russian President Putin last year.

It’s a key player among Arab states, yet also formalised ties with Israel via the historic Abraham Accords. It’s a top ten oil exporter, yet it hosted the annual COP climate talks last year. All this requires a lot of bridge-building, and the UAE’s bridge-builder-in-chief is Lana Nusseibeh, the UAE’s ambassador at the UN in New York.

In the role since 2013, Nusseibeh was really put to the test when the UAE won a term on the UN Security Council over 2022-23. Remember those years? Yes, that’s when Russia invaded Ukraine and Hamas attacked Israel, triggering an ongoing security and humanitarian disaster.

Nusseibeh, representing the only Arab state on the Council during two of the most challenging years in modern history, reportedly handled the role like a true pro and was vital in building whatever few bridges were built.

Born: 1963
Nationality: 🇱🇮 Liechtenstein

With a population of just 40,000 people, the German-speaking microstate of Liechtenstein is tiny. But Christian Wenaweser, its ambassador to the UN, is an example of how small countries can still make big waves. He’s been in the role since 2002, far longer than the usual diplomatic rotation of three or four years. He’s putting the ‘permanent’ in permanent representative.

Wenaweser has been kicking goals at the UN for decades, mainly because his team has good ideas. He played a pivotal role in defining the International Criminal Court’s “crime of aggression” and is a voice many listen to on UN Security Council reform.

One highlight was in 2022 when the UN General Assembly adopted his resolution titled “Standing mandate for a General Assembly debate when a veto is cast in the Security Council”.

It sounds bureaucratic – because it is – but put simply, the measure means any time one of the UN Security Council’s permanent members vetoes a resolution, it automatically gets referred to the broader UN General Assembly for debate. The idea is to increase the political cost of permanent members using their veto. It also increases the influence of the UN’s most representative body, the General Assembly.

Sure, Russia doesn’t seem to mind being chewed out in the Assembly and almost relishes the opportunity to disseminate its narrative there. But others (particularly China) are more sensitive to this kind of scolding. So, thanks to tiny Lichtenstein and its representatives in New York, several world powers now think twice – maybe three times – before exercising their veto.

Born: 1959
Nationality: 🇮🇳 Indian

It’s hard to think of a duller job title, but this role is quietly crucial at UN HQ. Khare knows the players, the processes, and (we assume) where the skeletons are hidden.

In practice, this means he often shapes the how, where, and when behind meaningful UN conversations. And that’s key in determining what ultimately emerges.

 Nationality: 🇺🇸 American

The UN chief doesn’t have much formal power, so his ability to leverage his role’s gravitas to shape the global narrative is critical. At the heart of that effort sits his comms guru, Melissa Fleming, an author and communications specialist who started her career with Radio Free Europe in Munich in the dying days of the Cold War before leading comms at the UN’s refugee and atomic energy agencies.

Fleming first earned the trust and respect of UN Secretary-General Guterres while serving as his comms director over at the UN refugee agency. He then brought Fleming across to UN HQ as a senior advisor in 2016 before appointing her as Under-Secretary-General in 2019. Fleming is a very close, trusted advisor to Guterres.

Born: 1968
Nationality: 🇧🇼 Botswanan

As we flagged above, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) is the UN’s main deliberative body, where all 193 UN members have a seat and discuss every conceivable international issue. The role of UNGA president has had more influence and resources since a key reform in 2005, and it’s been under more scrutiny since a vast corruption scandal involving a previous president. 

So these days, the UNGA president has more influence in setting and running the UNGA agenda. The current president, veteran Trinidadian diplomat Dennis Francis, has set four priorities: peace, prosperity, progress, and sustainability. 

To deliver on that ambition, he has a team of 41 staff led by Collen Kelapile, a seasoned Botswanan diplomat, his country’s former ambassador to the UN, and a former president of the UN’s Economic and Social Council (one of the UN’s six principal organs). So Kelapile is a serious UN player and continues to sit at the centre of key UN conversations.

Nationality: 🇮🇳 Indian

In any organisation, whoever holds the purse strings holds the power. But the UN isn’t your average organisation and doesn’t have your average budget. Dubbed “The Paymaster”, Ramanathan manages $14B across dozens of budgets across dozens of UN projects, divisions, agencies, locations, and contributors (countries). 

Some of these budgets are located in warzones, and maintaining operations there means literally flying in plane-loads of cash. Expenditure can spike when there’s a disaster. And revenues (country contributions) can hit UN bank accounts at different times, from different sources, with different strings attached, subject to different national laws, and limited by different sanctions regimes.

If that weren’t enough, up to 70% of the funding the UN receives is voluntary, meaning countries can stop or pivot their funding at any time, for any reason.

This all means the UN can sometimes run low on cash, famously forcing it to turn off escalators, water fountains, and even the cafeteria oven to try and conserve cash. So you can see it’s a tough gig, and Ramanathan is regarded as having done a solid job at simplifying and optimising UN processes to smooth it all out.

Born: 1947
Nationality: 🇺🇸 American

We mentioned earlier that much of the power at the UN really sits with the ‘P5’: the five permanent members of the Security Council (the US, UK, France, Russia, and China). By extension, if you’ve got access to the P5, you’ve got power.

One such person with regular P5 access is Rosemary DiCarlo, who heads up the UN’s political affairs team. In practice, anytime a political issue is being discussed at the Security Council, DiCarlo will be on the agenda to provide a briefing on the situation. This gives her clout, including on key issues like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Nationality: 🇵🇹 Portuguese

In reality, Graça is the UN chief’s real gatekeeper. A fellow Portuguese national, he’s known and worked with Guterres since the days when Guterres was prime minister in Portugal, and Graça was a serving Portuguese diplomat. Guterres brought Graça with him to New York upon taking up the UN Secretary-General role.

Graça now controls critical processes around the UN chief’s calendar, scheduling, and meetings, which is always a crucial behind-the-scenes role for any world leader. 

But Graça is also a key confidant for Guterres. He’s a regular member of the UN chief’s travelling team, and the world got a rare glimpse into the real trust the two share when a US intelligence report detailing an eavesdropped discussion between Graça and his boss was leaked last year. Aside from the content of the private discussion (about Ukraine), their phone conversation was striking because of how frank and open the two were. 

So Graça’s closeness to Guterres makes him a key behind-the-scenes player at the UN, and that earns him a spot on Intrigue’s very first Power List.

Hosting the world’s largest diplomatic community – at the world’s key international body in one of the world’s largest megacities – is a mammoth task. In the case of the UN and the 188 countries with permanent missions to its HQ, the hosting duties fall to the US.

This role generates an astounding and endless firehose of sensitivity and scandal, which explains why the section tends to be led by a veteran US diplomat.

Nationality: 🇹🇩 Chadian

We’ve already mentioned how dull job titles can be in the UN world, but this one might take the cake: chair, advisory, committee, administrative, and budgetary questions. Each word is strikingly dull individually, let alone combined.

But yet again, this position is vital. The ACABQ is a group of experts that reviews the UN Secretary General’s entire budget proposal each year, including proposed spending at HQ, around the world, and via some specialised UN bodies like the United Nations Environment Programme. 

The chair of the ACABQ is Chadian diplomat Abdallah Bachar Bong, who gets a rare and valuable birds-eye view of the UN budget, reflecting its priorities and vulnerabilities. This gives him influence on the final spending decisions, which are taken at the UN General Assembly’s Fifth Committee via a much more political (and painful) process.

Born: 1961
Nationality: 🇳🇬 Nigerian, 🇬🇧 British

All the UN’s various ‘under’, ‘assistant’, and ‘deputy’ secretaries can get confusing, but Amina Mohammed is the big one: she’s second-in-charge to UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

In practice, that means she runs the show when Guterres travels (that’s a lot). It also means she cracks stubborn heads together when a problem needs fixing (also a lot).

Mohammed was formerly Nigeria’s environment minister and was one of the key architects behind the world’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. So aside from being one of Guterres’s closest colleagues, she also has genuine credibility and authority in her parallel role as Chair of the UN Sustainable Development Group, which tracks, coordinates, and guides the world’s efforts towards the Sustainable Development Goals.

Born: 1967
Nationality: 🇵🇹 Portuguese

With limited formal power, the UN chief also relies on the credibility and opprobrium of international law to back his interventions. And getting that right means having a thorough and nuanced understanding of international law. For that, he leans heavily on the UN’s legal counsel, Miguel de Serpa Soares.

A fellow Portuguese national, Serpa coincidentally served under Guterres when the latter was prime minister in Portugal, but the two compatriots first worked closely together when Guterres was elected to the top UN job.

Serpa started out with a heavy focus on sea law, which is at the heart of international flashpoints like the South China Sea. But since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the latest Israel-Hamas conflict, he’s become a source of wide-ranging legal advice for Guterres.

However, critics say he sometimes oversteps his role as legal counsel and instead provides policy advice under a legal fig leaf. And the advice he gives is reportedly pretty cautious, overriding the views of other senior UN players. Still, Serpa is close to Guterres, and that makes him influential.

Born: 1945
Nationality: 🇵🇰 Pakistani

For all its drama back home, Pakistan has produced several influential diplomats abroad, including its current permanent representative in New York, Munir Akram. This is actually Akram’s second stint in the role, his third posting to New York, and comes on top of the seven years he did earlier as Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva.

He also did stints as Pakistan’s ambassador to the EU and Japan, chair of the G77 (see above), plus a term as president of the UN’s key Economic and Social Council, using the time to press his concept of a new international system for development finance.

Interestingly, his first stint as ambassador in New York (2002-08) coincided with Pakistan’s term on the Security Council, and Pakistan is now running unopposed for another term (2025-26).

So, assuming he’s still in the role, Akram will again represent Pakistan at what is arguably the world’s most important (and dysfunctional) table. He’s a heavy hitter who plays the system well, so you can bet the Council’s permanent members will know he’s there.

Of all the diplomatic postings you can get, the UN in New York is as gruelling as glamorous. This may sound a little precious from the outside, but we’re talking Fifth Committee negotiations that charge through Christmas, weekend crisis briefings that ruin kids’ birthdays, and world leader visits each September that topple many a marriage.

It’s a 24/7 job, and to get through it all, diplomats at the UN lean on coffee (and yes, booze). The most common spot to have a quiet word over a latte with another diplomat is at the UN’s North Delegates Lounge, which looks pretty schmick thanks to a Dutch redesign in 2011 (courtesy of the Dutch government).

But for those diplomats needing to get out, Pennylane Coffee, located over the road on 45th Street at 2nd, is one of the most popular haunts. You’d be surprised how much official business gets done there over a quiet espresso in the corner.

And that seems like the right place to end this Power List – with a nod to the fine baristas at Pennylane and UN HQ who keep the wheels of diplomacy turning.