WHO chief Tedros walks tightrope on Ethiopia’s Tigray
GENEVA (AFP) — Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization’s leader, is in the rare position of heading a U.N. agency’s response to a humanitarian crisis in which his own family’s survival is at stake.
Tedros, 57, hails from Tigray, the besieged northern region of Ethiopia gripped by two years of fighting and misery.
The ceasefire deal between Ethiopia’s government and Tigrayan rebels raised hopes that the brutal situation in Africa’s second most populous country could ease.
“We are glad that peace is being given a chance,” Tedros told a press conference on Wednesday.
But he insisted that aid must be allowed in urgently, lamenting that “after the ceasefire agreement, I was expecting that food and medicines would just flow immediately. That’s not happening.”
Since the conflict erupted two years ago, the region’s six million people have been virtually cut off from the outside world.
They face dire shortages of fuel, food and medicines, and lack basic services, including communications and electricity.
Globally recognizable as the face of the international COVID-19 response, Tedros frequently uses his platform to speak out on his homeland.
Tedros was a top figure in the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which forms the backbone of the Tigrayan rebellion.
“Yes, this affects me personally. I don’t pretend it doesn’t,” the WHO chief told reporters on Oct. 19.
“Most of my relatives are in the most affected areas, more than 90 percent of them.
“But my job is to draw the world’s attention to crises that threaten the health of people wherever they are.”
In seeking to open the floodgates for aid, U.N. agencies will need to tread carefully to avoid alienating the Ethiopian government.
Tedros therefore has to walk a fine line, knowing that in evoking the suffering in Tigray, he opens himself up to allegations of overstepping his brief.
Going further than most U.N. leaders, Tedros said on Nov. 1 that the risk of “genocide” in Tigray is “real but can be averted if we act now.”
Addis Ababa has repeatedly accused him of being partisan and abusing his position, and warns that his interventions threaten the WHO’s integrity.
At the WHO’s executive board meeting in January, Ethiopian ambassador Zenebe Kebede Korcho accused Tedros of “using his office to advance his personal political interest” at Ethiopia’s expense.
Addis Ababa also slammed Tedros’s re-election in May and urged the WHO to investigate him for “misconduct and violation of his professional and legal responsibility.”
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into Tigray on Nov. 4, 2020, accusing the region’s ruling TPLF of attacking federal army camps.
The TPLF was the dominant force in the four-party Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition which controlled Ethiopian politics from 1991 for the best part of three decades.
Tedros sat on the TPLF’s nine-member executive committee until he was appointed to the WHO in Geneva.