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When the pandemic struck in late 2019, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, became the face of the global response.
Largely unreported, however, is Tedros’s estrangement with the government of his native Ethiopia. That government lobbied furiously in May to thwart his second five-year term as the global health leader.
Tedros stepped onto the world stage by leveraging his reputation as the man who engineered the transformation of Ethiopia’s healthcare system to make it accessible to millions who previously had little to no access. He did it as Ethiopia’s minister of health in a government led by his ethnic group and a party he helped lead. But that party, known as the TPLF, or the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, was shoved out of power in 2018 after a nearly 30-year rule. Its leadership departed the capital Addis Ababa and moved to the northern region of Tigray.
The Ethiopian government has since declared the TPLF a terrorist organization after the group attacked a federal garrison in November 2020. The resulting civil war has cost the lives of tens of thousands, and by some estimates, up to half a million combatants and civilians have died. Ethiopia has a population of 115 million and is key to stability in the Horn of Africa, which is plagued by conflicts in neighboring Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan.
But alongside his WHO work, Tedros has used his Twitter megaphone, where he is followed by 1.7 million people, to focus the world’s attention on the Tigray conflict. He has also denounced strikes on civilians in Ukraine. Oftentimes, Tedros’s posts about Tigray are cryptic one-word missives such as “Perseverance” that both his supporters and detractors believe are coded messages about the Tigray conflict. At other times, Tedros retweets stories that highlight the toll the civil war has taken on Tigrayans.
In June 2021, when the TPLF launched a counteroffensive and took back its regional capital, Tedros tweeted, “Pride.” In late 2021, TPLF forces made steady progress and appeared headed to Addis Ababa, the capital, to oust the central government. But then, the war took an unexpected turn in December 2021. Federal forces and militia, helped by Turkish drones, pushed back the TPLF to the Tigray regional border, where the war remains in an unresolved stalemate.
With the conflict in a tactical cul-de-sac, the Tigray conflict faded from headlines as the world’s attention soon turned to another conflict, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But Tedros maintained his focus on Tigray. In a personal video, he explicitly condemned the conditions in Tigray and urged the world to pressure Ethiopia to change its policies.
Tedros’s detractors have questioned his activism on behalf of Tigray and what role, if any, U.N. officials should play in global conflicts. The Ethiopian government has condemned Tedros and accused him of using his position to support the political party he used to help lead. Tedros argued back, “There have been reports suggesting I am taking sides in this situation. This is not true and I want to say that I am on only one side and that is the side of peace.”
Regardless, Tedros’s situation underlines the controversy which can follow when leaders of global organizations enter debates on national concerns.
Samson Mulugeta is a former Johannesburg bureau chief for New York Newsday and has reported from more than 50 conflict zones in Africa and Asia.
