Nawaf Salam: Lebanon’s Prime Minister ‘Judge’ in Joseph Aoun’s First Term in Office

Lebanese Ambassador to the United Nations Nawaf Salam speaks to reporters after Security Council consultations on the situation in Libya, March 14, 2011 at United Nations headquarters. (AP)
Lebanese Ambassador to the United Nations Nawaf Salam speaks to reporters after Security Council consultations on the situation in Libya, March 14, 2011 at United Nations headquarters. (AP)
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Nawaf Salam: Lebanon’s Prime Minister ‘Judge’ in Joseph Aoun’s First Term in Office

Lebanese Ambassador to the United Nations Nawaf Salam speaks to reporters after Security Council consultations on the situation in Libya, March 14, 2011 at United Nations headquarters. (AP)
Lebanese Ambassador to the United Nations Nawaf Salam speaks to reporters after Security Council consultations on the situation in Libya, March 14, 2011 at United Nations headquarters. (AP)

Years after his name had been suggested by the Lebanese opposition to become prime minister, Judge Nawaf Salam was finally tasked on Monday with the formation of a new government under newly elected President Joseph Aoun’s first term in office.

Salam, currently serving as the head of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), was nominated by the majority of lawmakers during consultations with Aoun.

Salam was born in Beirut on December 15, 1953. He was elected as head of the ICJ in February 2024.

His nomination as prime minister was first floated by the opposition in wake of the October 2019 anti-government protests, after the resignation of Saad Hariri as PM.

The opposition at the time had proposed him as a neutral-technocratic figure who was not affiliated with the current political class. His candidacy was “vetoed” by the Shiite duo of Hezbollah and its ally the Amal movement, headed by parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.

They deemed him as the “United States’ candidate” and effectively thwarted his nomination. Hassan Diab was appointed prime minister instead.

The duo had on Monday refrained from nominating any candidate for the position of prime minister.

Diab’s government resigned after the August 4, 2020, Beirut Port explosion. Salam was again suggested as prime minister, but an agreement between the majority of political blocs led to Mustafa Adib’s appointment with 90 votes.

Adib would step down days later due to differences over the formation of the government.

Throughout that time, Salam had not taken political sides, but expressed his appreciation for MPs who had suggested his nomination.

Call for reform

He stressed the need to “save Lebanon from its plight, which demands change in how crises are handled and how work should be done. This starts with the implementation of financial and political reforms, which should focus on confronting the mentality of clientelism and quotas.”

He also underlined the importance of establishing an independent judiciary and “fortifying state institutions against sectarianism and favoritism.”

“The reforms will be meaningless if they are not based on the principles of fairness, social justice and the protection of rights and public and private freedoms.”

He vowed that he will always work alongside figures who “are committed to change to reform the state and allow it to impose its sovereignty throughout its territory and restore Lebanon’s position in the Arab world and the world’s trust in it.”

Salam and the ICJ

Salam’s appointment as head of the ICJ had alarmed Israel. He had taken clear stances against Israel and openly supported the Palestinian cause.

Israel’s Jerusalem Post said he has a “long history in opposing Israel through his statements and stances.” It recalled a tweet aimed at Israel in 2015, in which he said: “Unhappy birthday to you, 48 years of occupation.”

Salam is a member of a prominent family from Beirut. His grandfather “Abou Ali” Salim Ali Salam (1868-1938) was a leading figure in the capital. He was a member of the Ottoman parliament and head of its municipality in 1908.

Nawaf’s father, Abdullah Salam, was a prominent businessman and one of the founders of Middle East Airlines, Lebanon’s national carrier.

One of his uncles is former Prime Minister Saeb Salam, who served in that post four times between 1952 and 1973. Tammam Salam is a cousin who served as prime minister twice between 2014 and 2016.

Nawaf Salam holds a doctorate in political science from France’s prestigious Sciences Po university as well as a doctorate in history from France’s Sorbonne University. He also has a Master of Laws degree from Harvard Law School. Salam has worked as a lecturer at several universities, including the American University of Beirut.

Prior to heading the ICJ, he served as Lebanon’s ambassador to the United Nations between 2007 and 2017. He also represented the country at the UN Security Council between 2010 and 2011.

His publications include “Lebanon Between Past and Future”, published in Beirut in 2021.



As the UN Turns 80, Its Crucial Humanitarian Aid Work Faces a Clouded Future

Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
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As the UN Turns 80, Its Crucial Humanitarian Aid Work Faces a Clouded Future

Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

At a refugee camp in northern Kenya, Aujene Cimanimpaye waits as a hot lunch of lentils and sorghum is ladled out for her and her nine children — all born while she has received United Nations assistance since fleeing her violence-wracked home in Congo in 2007.

“We cannot go back home because people are still being killed,” the 41-year-old said at the Kakuma camp, where the UN World Food Program and UN refugee agency help support more than 300,000 refugees, The Associated Press said.

Her family moved from Nakivale Refugee Settlement in neighboring Uganda three years ago to Kenya, now home to more than a million refugees from dozens of conflict-hit east African countries.

A few kilometers (miles) away at the Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement, fellow Congolese refugee Bahati Musaba, a mother of five, said that since 2016, “UN agencies have supported my children’s education — we get food and water and even medicine,” as well as cash support from WFP to buy food and other basics.

This year, those cash transfers — and many other UN aid activities — have stopped, threatening to upend or jeopardize millions of lives.

As the UN marks its 80th anniversary this month, its humanitarian agencies are facing one of the greatest crises in their history: The biggest funder — the United States — under the Trump administration and other Western donors have slashed international aid spending. Some want to use the money to build up national defense.

Some UN agencies are increasingly pointing fingers at one another as they battle over a shrinking pool of funding, said a diplomat from a top donor country who spoke on condition of anonymity to comment freely about the funding crisis faced by some UN agencies.

Such pressures, humanitarian groups say, diminish the pivotal role of the UN and its partners in efforts to save millions of lives — by providing tents, food and water to people fleeing unrest in places like Myanmar, Sudan, Syria and Venezuela, or helping stamp out smallpox decades ago.

“It’s the most abrupt upheaval of humanitarian work in the UN in my 40 years as a humanitarian worker, by far,” said Jan Egeland, a former UN humanitarian aid chief who now heads the Norwegian Refugee Council. “And it will make the gap between exploding needs and contributions to aid work even bigger.”

‘Brutal’ cuts to humanitarian aid programs UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has asked the heads of UN agencies to find ways to cut 20% of their staffs, and his office in New York has floated sweeping ideas about reform that could vastly reshape the way the United Nations doles out aid.

Humanitarian workers often face dangers and go where many others don’t — to slums to collect data on emerging viruses or drought-stricken areas to deliver water.

The UN says 2024 was the deadliest year for humanitarian personnel on record, mainly due to the war in Gaza. In February, it suspended aid operations in the stronghold of Yemen’s Houthi group, who have detained dozens of UN and other aid workers.

Proponents say UN aid operations have helped millions around the world affected by poverty, illness, conflict, hunger and other troubles.

Critics insist many operations have become bloated, replete with bureaucratic perks and a lack of accountability, and are too distant from in-the-field needs. They say postcolonial Western donations have fostered dependency and corruption, which stifles the ability of countries to develop on their own, while often UN-backed aid programs that should be time-specific instead linger for many years with no end in sight.

In the case of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning WFP and the UN’s refugee and migration agencies, the US has represented at least 40% of their total budgets, and Trump administration cuts to roughly $60 billion in US foreign assistance have hit hard. Each UN agency has been cutting thousands of jobs and revising aid spending.

“It's too brutal what has happened,” said Egeland, alluding to cuts that have jolted the global aid community. “However, it has forced us to make priorities ... what I hope is that we will be able to shift more of our resources to the front lines of humanity and have less people sitting in offices talking about the problem.”

With the UN Security Council's divisions over wars in Ukraine and the Middle East hindering its ability to prevent or end conflict in recent years, humanitarian efforts to vaccinate children against polio or shelter and feed refugees have been a bright spot of UN activity. That's dimming now.

Not just funding cuts cloud the future of UN humanitarian work

Aside from the cuts and dangers faced by humanitarian workers, political conflict has at times overshadowed or impeded their work.

UNRWA, the aid agency for Palestinian refugees, has delivered an array of services to millions — food, education, jobs and much more — in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan as well as in the West Bank and Gaza since its founding in 1948.

Israel claims the agency's schools fan antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiment, which the agency denies. Israel says Hamas siphons off UN aid in Gaza to profit from it, while UN officials insist most aid gets delivered directly to the needy.

“UNRWA is like one of the foundations of your home. If you remove it, everything falls apart,” said Issa Haj Hassan, 38, after a checkup at a small clinic at the Mar Elias Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut.

UNRWA covers his diabetes and blood pressure medication, as well as his wife’s heart medicine. The United States, Israel's top ally, has stopped contributing to UNRWA; it once provided a third of its funding. Earlier this year, Israel banned the aid group, which has strived to continue its work nonetheless.

Ibtisam Salem, a single mother of five in her 50s who shares a small one-room apartment in Beirut with relatives who sleep on the floor, said: “If it wasn’t for UNRWA we would die of starvation. ... They helped build my home, and they give me health care. My children went to their schools.”

Especially when it comes to food and hunger, needs worldwide are growing even as funding to address them shrinks.

“This year, we have estimated around 343 million acutely food insecure people,” said Carl Skau, WFP deputy executive director. “It’s a threefold increase if we compare four years ago. And this year, our funding is dropping 40%. So obviously that’s an equation that doesn’t come together easily.”

Billing itself as the world's largest humanitarian organization, WFP has announced plans to cut about a quarter of its 22,000 staff.

The aid landscape is shifting

One question is how the United Nations remains relevant as an aid provider when global cooperation is on the outs, and national self-interest and self-defense are on the upswing.

The United Nations is not alone: Many of its aid partners are feeling the pinch. Groups like GAVI, which tries to ensure fair distribution of vaccines around the world, and the Global Fund, which spends billions each year to help battle HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, have been hit by Trump administration cuts to the US Agency for International Development.

Some private-sector, government-backed groups also are cropping up, including the divisive Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been providing some food to Palestinians. But violence has erupted as crowds try to reach the distribution sites.

The future of UN aid, experts say, will rest where it belongs — with the world body's 193 member countries.

“We need to take that debate back into our countries, into our capitals, because it is there that you either empower the UN to act and succeed — or you paralyze it,” said Achim Steiner, administrator of the UN Development Program.