Ethiopia says the decision to expel seven senior United Nations (UN) staff last week is final, meaning there’s no room to reverse it despite the global agency’s efforts at negotiations.
Taye Atske Selassie, Ethiopia’s permanent representative to the UN, said his country had found a “multitude of transgressions” against the expelled bosses and alleged that “they openly conducted activism for the TPLF”, the country’s former ruling party that has been fighting government forces in Tigray.
The diplomat argued that Addis Ababa will no longer engage on how to reaccept the officials because the expulsion was legal and should never have become an agenda for discussion at the UN.
“There have been several instances where governments expelled UN staff and other diplomatic envoys for so many disclosed and undisclosed reasons. Did the Council ever meet to vindicate such a decision? Not to the best of our recollection,” he pointed out.
While he did not name the countries, Burundi and Somalia are some of the states that recently expelled UN staff for alleged meddling, without a reprimand from the UN.
“The government of Ethiopia is not under any legal obligation to provide any justification or explanation for its decisions.”
Last week on Thursday, Ethiopia announced it had expelled the seven in a statement issued by Dina Mufti, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry spokesperson. They were given until Sunday, September 30 to leave the country.
The note did not elaborate on the exact nature of the meddling, but listed Adele Khodr, the Unicef country representative in Ethiopia, Sonny Onyegbule, monitoring, reporting and advocacy team leader for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Kwesi Sansculotte, the peace and development adviser for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).
Others declared personae non gratae are Saeed Mohamoud Hersi, who served as deputy head of UNOCHA’s Ethiopia office, Grant Leaity, deputy humanitarian coordinator, Ghada Eltahir Mudawi, acting deputy humanitarian coordinator, and Marcy Vigoda, coordinator for humanitarian affairs.