Salam made his priorities clear in his first speech as prime minister-designate on Tuesday.

“We have wasted many opportunities to build the state,” he said. “Enough wasted opportunities.”

Experience abroad

Born in Beirut in 1953, Salam started his career as an academic and lecturer at universities, including the American University of Beirut (AUB), the Sorbonne in Paris and Harvard University in the United States.

He served from 2007 to 2017 as Lebanon’s ambassador to the United Nations, where he would “craft foreign policy when Lebanon had none”, said Mawad, who interned for Salam during his UN tenure.

A lawyer and a judge, Salam joined the ICJ in 2018, and in 2024, he was made its president. He presided over South Africa’s ongoing case that accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful. He also worked on UN resolutions, including 1701, which is the basis for the current ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.

Friends and former colleagues of Salam described him as humble, an intellectual and someone intimately familiar with the inner workings – and flaws – of the Lebanese political system.

Karim Emile Bitar, a political analyst who knows Salam, described the prime minister-designate as a staunch believer in the rights of the Palestinian people, Lebanon’s Arab identity, Lebanese national unity and “a new social contract on the basis of democratic citizenship rather than confessionalism”.