Lebanese President-elect Joseph Aoun has appointed veteran diplomat Nawaf Salam as the new prime minister of Lebanon on Monday, after he received the necessary votes in parliament.
Salam has a long political career in Lebanon and also has a strong international profile, with him currently serving as President of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN’s top court that recently ruled that Israel was plausibly committing genocide in Gaza.
Salam will be tasked with forming a new government, which, given Lebanon’s catastrophic economic situation and the destruction wrought by Israel on the country, will face significant challenges.
The New Arab takes looks at the life and career of Judge Nawaf Salam, Lebanon’s new premier.
A political family
Salam was born on 15 December 1953 in Beirut to a well-known political family. His father, Abdullah Salam, was one of the founders of Middle East Airlines, the Lebanese national airline.
Salam’s academic career began with a degree in Social Sciences from the School of Graduate Studies in Paris in 1974, followed by a doctorate in history from the Sorbonne University in Paris in 1979.
He later studied law at Beirut University in 1984, with him obtaining his Masters of Law from Harvard Law School in 1991.
Salam is married to Sahar Baassiri, a journalist and Lebanon’s ambassador to UNESCO, and has two sons, Abdullah and Marwan.
The political activities of his family go back to Ottoman rule over Lebanon, during which time his grandfather founded the Reform Movement in Beirut, which opposed Turkish imperialism in the Middle East.
His uncle Saeb Salam was the prime minister of the country four times between 1952 and 1973, while, more recently, his cousin Tammam Salam was prime minister from 2014-2016.
Politician and diplomat
After a prestigious career teaching at Harvard, Columbia and Yale, Salam’s first foray into politics in Lebanon came in 1999, when he was elected as a member of the Executive Office of the Economic and Social Council, a position he held until 2002.
Salam was supportive of the Cedar Revolution, which was a popular uprising of Lebanese against Syria’s military occupation of the country. After Syrian forces left the country, he was involved in various government bodies aimed at reforming electoral law.
He then moved into diplomacy, with him being appointed Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Lebanon to the United Nations and its representative in the Security Council between 2007 and 2017.
Salam was also the Representative of Lebanon to the UN Economic and Social Council in 2016 and 2018.
Salam’s name emerged as a technocratic candidate for prime minister during the popular Lebanese uprising in October 2019, and after the Beirut port explosion in August 2020.
Domestically, he is known for his opposition to Hezbollah as an independent, reformist, who insists on restricting the right to use weapons to the national military and security agencies solely responsible for protecting Lebanese territory.
On the international scene, he is known for being widely respected among Arab and European leaders.
During Lebanon’s presidential crisis, which saw the country go without a president from October 2022 up until last week, Salam ran for the role of caretaker prime minister but lost out to Najib Mikati after a veto by Hezbollah and its political bloc.
President of the ICJ
Running simultaneous to his political and diplomatic career, Salam also forged a successful legal career, with him practicing as a lawyer at Takla Law Firm and teaching international law and international relations at the American University of Beirut.
In 2018, Salam was first appointed as Lebanon’s judge of the ICJ, with him being appointed as the president of the UN’s highest court in 2024.
After being named president of the ICJ, Salam was dubbed “anti-Israel” due to his previous criticisms of Israel’s illegal and brutal occupation of the Palestinian territories.
A few months after his appointment, Israel began its vicious war on Gaza, destroying much of the enclave and killing 46,584 Palestinians, most of whom are civilians.
After South Africa brought a genocide case against Israel’s war on Gaza, with the court presided over by Salam ruling in January 2024 that Israel was committing plausible genocide in the Palestinian territory.
During Salam’s tenure, the ICJ also ruled in July 2024 that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, including the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, as unlawful under international law.
