Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was re-elected to serve a second five-year term as the Director-General of the World Health Organization at the 75th World Health Assembly on 24 May 2022. Dr Ghebreyesus is from Ethiopia’s Tigray region and he has been condemning the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments, as well as non-state actors in Ethiopia such as the Amhara militia, for the comprehensive humanitarian blockade, total siege, systematic rape, mass killings, total destruction of health facilities, and killings of humanitarian and health workers, and other atrocious acts committed in Tigray and against its people. There are, however, critics, especially from the Ethiopian government, that claim that he is abusing his mandate as the head of a UN organization. This raises the question to what extent high-ranking UN officials should stay neutral when it comes to conflict and crises in their home countries.

Mandate and watchdog 

As the Director-General of the WHO, Dr Ghebreyesus’ statements on the catastrophic humanitarian and medical condition of the people of Tigray and his call on the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments to lift the siege and humanitarian blockade are legitimate and within the purview of his mandate. It is important to understand the context of Dr Ghebreyesus’ statements. Dr Ghebreyesus has the responsibility of upholding WHO principles, which include the recognition that the “health of all peoples is fundamental to the attainment of peace and security and is dependent on the fullest cooperation of states and individuals” and that “the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.”

The war on Tigray started at a time of the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, and disrupted the efforts of the people of Tigray to prevent and contain the spread of the disease and mitigate its significant health and socio-economic-political impacts. Citing the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason for the move, on 31 March 2020, the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) postponed the scheduled 29 August 2020 legislative elections indefinitely. However, other voices, including the Government of Tigray,  have condemned the decision as a corona-clouded power grab.

The war on Tigray, referred to by the Ethiopian government as simply “law and order enforcement” against a few leaders in Tigray, turned out to be a well-planned total war against the people of Tigray that involved significant forces from foreign countries, including Eritrea and Somalia. Several reports by humanitarian organisations and investigations by human rights organisations and international media have repeatedly concluded that the gruesome mass atrocities committed against Tigrayans constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing that may amount to genocide. This is consistent with Ethiopian officials’ openly stated intent to erase Tigrayans. In February 2021, four months after the war started, they even shared their intentions with Pekko Havvisto, Finland’s Foreign Minister and EU Envoy to Ethiopia. “When I met the Ethiopian leadership in February, they really used this kind of language, that they are going to destroy the Tigrayans, they are going to wipe out the Tigrayans for 100 years, and so forth.

Despite the Ethiopian government declaring unilateral humanitarian ceasefires twice, first on 28 June 2021 and then on 24 March 2022, together with their Eritrean allies, Ethiopian forces have maintained the siege sealing off Tigray from the rest of the world and imposing “a de facto humanitarian aid blockade” as stated by the UN in July 2021. The siege involves a complete shutdown of telecommunications, transportation, electricity, and the banking system with the result that workers’ salaries cannot be paid, people with savings cannot access their money, and the Tigray diaspora cannot send remittances to help their families and friends in Tigray. Even aid agencies working in Tigray were denied cash and fuel and many were forced to halt their humanitarian operations.

By March 2022, 16 months since the start of the war, it was reported that an estimated half a million Tigrayans have been killed. Of those, close to 200,000 lost their lives by starvation, which is being deliberately used as a weapon of war, while another 100,000 civilian Tigrayans died from lack of access to basic medical care. The allied Ethiopian and Eritrean forces deliberately destroyed, damaged, and looted food production and supply chains and the entire health system. It is now close to 20 months since the war started and more Tigrayans have died from deliberate starvation, denial of medical care, torture, extrajudicial killings in the liberated part of Tigray, in western and other parts of Tigray still occupied by Ethiopian federal, Amhara, and Eritrean forces and in internment camps in many parts of Ethiopia.

The allied Ethiopian and Eritrean forces deliberately destroyed, damaged, and looted food production and supply chains and the entire health system.

The Ethiopian government and its allies are indeed working against the core UN charter and instruments including universal human rights such as the right to life, freedom of movement, right to food, right to health, and right to humanitarian aid. The people of Tigray are now denied the enjoyment of a standard of health services that they attained after decades of a hard, consistent and holistic effort to attain primary health care. The WHO sent critical medical supplies to all conflict-affected regions of Ethiopia but while the consignments to the Amhara and Afar regions arrived at destination without problems, those destined for Tigray have been deliberately blocked by Ethiopian authorities and their allies from reaching people who are being deliberately starved and denied access to basic medical supplies.

It is within this context that Dr Ghebreyesus is speaking out and calling for the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments to stop weaponizing access to food and medical supplies. Speaking at the inauguration of his second term, Dr Ghebreyesus said:

“I am humbled by the opportunity provided by the Member States to serve a second term as WHO Director-General”. He added, “This honour, though, comes with great responsibility and I am committed to working with all countries, my colleagues around the world, and our valued partners, to ensure WHO delivers on its mission to promote health, and keep the world safe and serve the vulnerable.”

Dr Ghebreyesus is therefore acting in line with his mandate to be a voice for the voiceless victims. Dr Ghebreyesus is impartial in that, under his leadership, the WHO has also been dispatching critical medical supplies to the Afar and Amhara regions; the UN system has a watchdog that oversees the impartiality of UN officials. Moreover, the UN also has an Office of Internal Oversight Services, which investigates misconduct and violations by UN officials and submits reports and recommendations to the UN Secretary-General.

The Ethiopian government did lodge a complaint to the WHO Office of Compliance, Risk Management and Ethics (CRE) and to the WHO’s Executive Board, alleging misconduct and calling for the removal of Dr Ghebreyesus from office claiming that he was using the office of the Director-General to further his personal political interests. This is part of the campaign that the Ethiopian government has been waging against all Tigrayans—attacks and witch-hunts against Tigrayans that lack any credibility. UN peacekeeping troops of Tigrayan origin deployed in Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan faced similar attacks which led the UN to treat them as prima facie refugees in need of protection.

Neutrality 

In his 2021 book titled Perilous Medicine, Professor Leonard Rubenstein describes the debate within the humanitarian and donor community about the role of neutrality in aid work, which can be extrapolated to the UN’s high-ranking officials.

Neutrality, one of the four principles of UN humanitarian practice (humanity, impartiality, and independence), is about not taking a position on one side or another in a conflict. When undertaking humanitarian and other UN operations in zones of armed conflict, UN officials are expected to remain neutral, avoiding taking sides or showing favouritism. In contrast, impartiality is maintaining non-discriminatory positions towards individuals and  groups of  people in a conflict  needing humanitarian assistance. However, neutrality should not mean that UN officials have to remain tight-lipped and passive when any of the warring parties are massacring and deliberately starving a civilian population and denying them access to life-saving assistance because of their ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political opinions, race or religion. As long as aid workers (or in this case UN officials) maintain impartiality, Professor Rubenstein questions if maintaining neutrality vis-à-vis a waring party or parties is even morally ethical, especially when they attack or deny civilians humanitarian assistance  because of their identity, as is the case with ethnic Tigrayans.

The WHO, led by Dr Ghebreyesus, has been impartial in its medical aid delivery to all ethnic groups affected by the civil war in northern Ethiopia.  While neutrality has been interpreted as not taking sides, it does not require Dr Ghebreyesus to be indifferent to the suffering of millions civilian Tigrayans when the Ethiopian government and its allies blatantly discriminate against them and deny them access to vital international medical assistance because of their ethnicity.

In her article Neutrality vs impartiality: What is the difference?, Carol Devine of Doctors Without Borders says, “Neutrality is not the same as staying silent. It’s nuanced and even controversial. MSF reserves the possibility to speak in public about massive human rights violations and crimes of humanity, including genocide.” A misguided interpretation of neutrality can lead, as it did in Rwanda, to catastrophic and regrettable tragedies. When civilians are facing crimes against humanity, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide as is still happening in Tigray, taking no action using neutrality as excuse is against the fundamental values and mandates of the UN human rights and international humanitarian law.

A misguided interpretation of neutrality can lead, as it did in Rwanda, to catastrophic and regrettable tragedies.

It is important to be aware of the unfortunate conflation of neutrality with the duty of impartiality. Indeed, former UN Deputy Secretary-General Louis Frechette is cited saying, “The UN cannot be impartial between those who respect international, humanitarian, and human rights laws and those who grossly violate them.” In 1999, former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan said, “In the face of genocide, there can be no standing aside, no looking away, no neutrality – there are perpetrators and there are victims, there is evil and there is evil’s harvest.”

The UN and its highest officials must not choose inaction under the pretext of observing neutrality especially where genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, weaponised rape, and starvation are taking place. The heads of UN organizations including Secretary-General Antonio Guterres need to join Dr Ghebreyesus in speaking up and acting against the continuing ethnic cleansing, siege and humanitarian blockade of millions of civilian Tigrayans.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson may have thought a trip to Kigali last week for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) would give him a nice break from home politics. But he was soon feeling hot, hot, hot when journalists besieged him with questions about his failing leadership, and the UK-Rwanda deportation plan which has been widely condemned as inhumane and illegal – not least by the Queen’s son.

Prince Charles allegedly called the plan “appalling” in private remarks that were leaked. This was a bombshell, coming on the eve of CHOGM, attended by both Johnson and the heir to the British throne. This leak dominated the news bulletins for days, as people speculated about what Charles (who chaired CHOGM, standing in for the ageing Queen) actually thinks. “Royals shouldn’t stick their noses into politics” was the riposte on the right.

If the Rwandan government thought this issue would not come up at CHOGM, they were sorely mistaken. Writer Michela Wrong, no friend of President Paul Kagame, threw oil on the flames as the meeting opened, publishing a story headed “Rwanda is a brutal repressive regime. Holding the Commonwealth summit there is a sham” Wrong is best known in Kenya for her 2010 best seller It’s Our Turn to Eat, a portrait of whistle-blower John Githongo (publisher of The Elephant) and the corruption he investigated.

Johnson was hoping to flag up trade and collaboration with Rwanda and across the Commonwealth, but was immediately hit by questions about the deportation plan. He retorted, without naming Prince Charles, “Critics need to keep an open mind about the policy. A lot of people can see its obvious merits.”

Convened under the theme of Delivering a Common Future: Connecting, Innovating, Transforming, President Kagame had hoped the meeting would be an opportunity for him to showcase his country’s transformation following a devastating genocide 27 years ago that left Rwanda on the brink. Instead, the meeting threatened to become overshadowed by questions over the morality, appropriateness and legality of his government’s association with Mr Johnson’s Rwanda asylum plan.

Questions were asked of Kagame, particularly around his government’s appalling human rights record and role in the destabilisation of neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo where a resurgent M23 rebel movement is reported to be a Rwandan proxy.

As expected, Kagame was not prepared to let anything take away from the fact that Rwanda, a former French colony that only joined the grouping in 2009, had just become the first African country to host CHOGM since Uganda in 2007.

“There is nobody that is in prison in Rwanda that should not be there,” he said at the press conference. “Actually there are people who are not in prison who should be there.” This was widely taken to be a reference to opposition critic Victoire Ingabire who, having been sentenced to 15 years in jail for “belittling the genocide and spreading rumours intended to incite people to revolt”, was subsequently pardoned by Kagame in 2018. She remains in Rwanda, unable to leave the country as her passport has been confiscated.

It has been reported that part of the agreement in relation to the Rwanda asylum plan with Britain includes a request from Rwanda for suspected genocide fugitives currently resident in Britain to be extradited to the East African nation.

Rwanda denies its wilful association with Johnson’s controversial policy—halted by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) pending a judicial review in July—is motivated by money. Kigali is set to receive £120 million as a down payment for housing asylum seekers, although this has been earmarked for “economic development” rather than for meeting the deportees’ accommodation and other living costs. (Some reports say this has have already been paid.) No further details have been provided as to how much the policy will cost per asylum seeker, although estimates have put the figure at up to £30,000 per head. Our request to the Home Office for this and other information has yet to be responded to.

In the first sign yet that the scrutiny and attention associated with this policy is perhaps beginning to take a toll on Kagame, a man not renowned for his patience especially where criticism is involved, he went on the offensive. “We try to do our best to give them a sense of security and normalcy,” he said. “If they don’t come, we won’t complain. It’s not like we are dying to have people come to us in this manner.”

Kigali is set to receive £120 million as a down payment for housing asylum seekers, although this has been earmarked for “economic development”.

In a communiqué published after the week-long meeting, an expanded Commonwealth (Gabon and Togo, two other former French colonies, have both been admitted), said it acknowledges that conflicts and crises affect migration patterns. In acknowledging that irregular migration, including when driven by conflict, creates significant challenges, the heads of state agreed that a capacity-centred approach to migration partnerships would best serve common goals. They emphasised the need for international cooperation to facilitate safe, orderly, and regular migration, including through the implementation of relevant international frameworks.

Built on Britain’s association with its colonial past, the Commonwealth has always proclaimed to be united by shared democratic values, good governance and the rule of law, respect for international human rights, gender equality and sustainable economic and social development. Given these values, one would have thought that, as the CHOGM host for 2022, Rwanda would have distanced herself from an inhumane, inherently racist, and probably illegal migrant policy by Britain.

Charges of racism 

In the topsy-turvy world of Britain’s Home Secretary Priti Patel, criticism of the Rwanda deportation plan is “racist” towards Rwanda, since some of it suggests that Rwanda is an awful place to live. But forcibly flying non-white asylum seekers halfway across the world on one-way tickets is not racist.

In her world, this plan will “smash the business model of people smuggling gangs”. But it does not target the people smugglers; it criminalizes their victims.

With her trademark smirk in overdrive, Patel has hit out at human rights lawyers who successfully argued that migrants earmarked for deportation include victims of modern slavery, a defence that stood up in court. This, together with other legal arguments and a last-minute injunction by the ECHR, prevented the first deportation flight from taking off on 14 June. Priti “Furious” Patel then vowed to change the law to remove this loophole—and pledged to cut Britain’s ties with the ECHR. The government has since unveiled a major overhaul of the human rights laws, which will entail abolishing the existing Human Rights Act and give parliament the power to overrule ECHR judgements. However, Britain will remain a party to the European Convention on Human Rights.

Sacha Deshmukh, chief executive of Amnesty International UK, said, “It’s very troubling that the UK government is prepared to damage respect for the authority of the European Court of Human Rights because of a single decision it doesn’t like. This is not about tinkering with rights, it’s about removing them.”

Donning his “breath-taking hypocrisy” hat, Prime Minister Boris Johnson regularly proclaims that Britain is a moral beacon for the rest of the globe. But British church leaders have strongly condemned the deportation plan as immoral and un-Christian.

The government has since unveiled a major overhaul of the human rights laws, which will entail abolishing the existing Human Rights Act.

We wrote about this earlier. To briefly recap, in a bid to solve the UK’s immigration crisis, and in particular deter cross-Channel migrants and asylum seekers who arrive by dinghy (more than 28,500 in the past year, treble the number for 2020), the British government announced a deal with Rwanda to deport migrants there for asylum processing. Even if their appeal were successful, the migrants would not be able to return to Britain. The option would be to stay in Rwanda, or be deported again, either to their home countries or to some other destination. All this is pretty rich coming from Patel, herself the daughter of Ugandan-Asian immigrants who arrived in Britain in the 1960s.

In our earlier story, we drew parallels with colonial-era deportations within East Africa and from Britain to Australia.

Political distraction

The controversial scheme is widely seen as an attempt by Johnson’s Tory government to distract from its many domestic woes. These include a recent no-confidence vote in his leadership (41 per cent of Tory MPs voted to oust him), two important defeats in by-elections that prompted the resignation of the party chairman, the “Partygate” scandal which saw the Prime Minister and close aides fined by police for holding parties at No. 10 during COVID lockdown, train strikes that have brought the country to a standstill, and a cost of living crisis. The Rwanda plan is cheap clickbait for right-wing Brexit voters, furious at the Tories’ failure to curb cross-Channel migration. It triggered comments like the following one online after Patel’s outburst at “racist” critics: “It’s a bit racist to make some of the statements some people make about Rwanda. If a black man enters my house illegally is it racist to call the police?” (A reader’s comment in the Daily Telegraph, 20 June).

The Rwanda plan is cheap clickbait for right-wing Brexit voters, furious at the Tories’ failure to curb cross-Channel migration.

In stark contrast to the way Britain proposes to deal with Channel migrants, it is simultaneously welcoming Ukrainian refugees with open arms. This has led to a binary narrative in public discourse—legal refugees who happen to be white and Judeo-Christian, versus “illegals” who are mostly not. In fact, there is nothing illegal about seeking and claiming asylum. Many of the placements of Ukrainians in British homes are not going well, according to one contact who is volunteering to coordinate the reception scheme in one county. Host families are angrily complaining that the refugees are “rude and ungrateful”, and are ending the agreements they made only a few weeks ago, leaving some vulnerable Ukrainians homeless. She believes many hosts signed up to house refugees for the wrong reasons. “People are boasting online about getting a refugee, saying ‘I’ve got one! I’ve got one!’ I want to say, ‘They’re not pets!’”

As the presidential campaign gets into high gear and with only 48 days to the general election, a key plank of Raila Odinga’s support group has been very quiet and less and less visible from the public.

For the better part of 2021, the Mt Kenya Foundation (MKF) was very much in the limelight, meeting with the Azimio alliance presidential candidate in carefully choreographed business bashes, cocktail parties, prayer meetings and even in public rallies. Come 2022 and the meetings have gradually petered out.

Or, let’s put this way: their soirées are no longer being reported by the mainstream media, including their “in-house” media house, the Royal Media Services (RMS) owned by media mogul S.K. Macharia, one of the foundation’s members.

Two weeks ago, I had a lengthy discussion with one of their members, who told me that nothing has changed. “Our position and support hasn’t changed; Raila is still our preferred choice. We only decided to continue lending our support away from the public glare.”

The foundation still funds some of his presidential campaigns, albeit discreetly. “Our people [Gikuyu, Meru, Embu Association GEMA] were not, and are not, enthused by our [open] support for Raila. We were getting a lot of flak from them and we reckoned it wasn’t helping his and our cause. Nothing will sway GEMA from not voting for Raila. That’s the brutal fact.”

It’s not only MKF that has stopped declaring their support for Raila publicly. The Council of Elders, which in October 2020 made a hyped trip to Bondo, the ancestral home of the Odinga family in Siaya County, have equally gone mute. “After that trip, the [Kikuyu] people shunned our activities and seemingly avoided us,” one of the elders told me recently. “They didn’t take well to our partisan and public support of Raila.”

The MKF, which was formed in 2007, comprises among others, captains of industry, very senior and influential civil servants, and powerful politicians. The year 2007 was a critical juncture in the politics of Kenya: President Mwai Kibaki, who died in April 2022, was going to face Raila in the coming December presidential elections.

Although Raila had helped Kibaki clinch the presidential seat in the crucial 2002 general elections, against the greenhorn duo of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, by the end of his first term Kibaki had become Raila’s nemesis. Under the Orange Democratic Party (ODM) banner, Raila had already sent shivers down Kibaki’s party ranks that in 2007 elections ODM was ready to wrestle power from him.

It is against this backdrop that some of the richest among the GEMA fraternity coalesced around the MKF. Basically, it was a platform for raising campaign money for Kibaki’s second term. Not ready to witness another change of the rear guard just when they had begun consolidating their riches, after a 24-year hiatus during President Daniel arap Moi’s reign, this ethnic group was not about to take any chances.

Raila mounted a formidable if disorganised campaign. But just as he was on the cusp of wresting power from Kibaki, who was now running under the Party of National Unity (PNU), a new party that had been quickly cobbled together, the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) —precursor to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC)—started relaying startling results.

What the end result of this “startling results” heralded for Kenya is now in the history books: post-election violence (PEV), over 600,000 internally displaced people (IDPs), unmitigated deaths officially put at 1,000 by the state, but recorded figure by non-governmental organisation (NGOs) placed the numbers at three time as much.

The MKF is not an entirely new invention—in 1996, some of the richest Kikuyus from Central Kenya came together to form the Central Province Development Support Group (CPDSG) in anticipation of the GEMA–KAMATUSA (Kalenjin, Maasai, Turkana, Samburu) peace talks. The supposedly “peace group” was formed presumably to stem (ethnic and post-election) tensions that first occurred after the first multiparty elections in 1992.

The talks were also supposed to culminate in the re-settling of the victims of the so-called tribal violence that had erupted in the expansive Rift Valley Province and which mostly affected the Kikuyu people. The reality is that this elite cabal that was again composed of influential civil servants, rich business people and powerful politicians was an informal lobby group that sought to campaign for the hated ruling party KANU and for President Moi in Central Province.

Then, as now, one of the constant figures in these formations has been S.K. Macharia; he belonged to the CPDSG just as he now belongs to the MKF. As with the CPDSG then, the MKF is a lobby group primarily concerned with the survival of its business interests.

William Kabogo, the first governor of Kiambu County who is seeking to reclaim his seat in 2022, wrote on his twitter handle: “If you care to know Mt Kenya Foundation specializes on fundraising but the big question is do the funds go to the intended purpose? Your guess is as god as mine. Caveat emptor.”

Among the MKF membership is Mutuma Nkanata, the foundation’s coordinator who is also the CEO of the NGO Coordination Board—the regulatory board for NGOs in Kenya. He is also the Chairman of Kirimara Sports; a Meru-based sports development organisation.

Another member is the former Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) boss Michael Waweru. Waweru was appointed commissioner-general of KRA in 2003 by Kibaki. His contract ended in 2012. An accountant by profession, he was the managing partner at Ernst & Young (EY) – East Africa until 2002.

Also in MKF is Peter Munga, founding chairman of Equity Bank group and one of its largest shareholders. Munga is also a shareholder at Britam, the financial services conglomerate, and a founder of the Pioneer Group of Schools.

MKF member Titus Ibui is the chairman of Lamu Port South Sudan, Ethiopia, Transport Corridor Development Authority (LAPSSET), a regional infrastructure partnership between Ethiopia, Kenya and South Sudan. Ibui is also the vice chairman of Kenya Leather Council and founder and executive director of Bell Industries Ltd., an agri-business and health solutions company.

Zamara Group chairman, politician and former MP Dennis Waweru is also an MKF member, as is  businessman Wilfred Murungi, owner of Mastermind Tobacco Kenya (MTK).

During one of the Raila meetings organised by MKF on 28 September 2021, communications director Joe Murimi said, “The Tuesday (September) meeting between MKF and Mr Odinga is also with a view to coordinating resource allocation and setting priorities for the region’s economic turn-around ahead of 2022. We’re listening to all presidential contenders and our interests as a region are way bigger than only the position of a deputy president.” The foundation had previously met with Raila in June 2022.

Some of the personalities in the June meeting included President Uhuru’ influential maternal uncle, former Catholic priest George Muhoho, Media mogul Macharia and former Kenya Chamber of Commerce vice chairman, James Mureu.

At the meeting, Macharia claimed that it was President Uhuru Kenyatta who made overtures to Raila Odinga. “I’m saying that handshake, we ask him (Uhuru) to leave it in good hands so that it can continue. We believe President Uhuru will leave this country in good hands, the hands he went looking for.”

At that meeting  Nyandarua County governor Francis Kimemia confessed that the Kikuyu political class had peddled falsehoods against Raila. “Our work was to tarnish Raila’s name, but now we must change that narrative and tell our people that that was politics then. He asked the class to help undo the lies.”

Two months ago, in April 2022, campaigning in his own Nyandarua County, Kimemia changed his tune, insinuating that President Uhuru had not kept his promise on developments projects in Nyandarua. I called my friend Njenga from Rurii location, to find out was going on with governor Kimemia. “Kimemia was told by the people in no uncertain terms that campaigning for Azimio would take him nowhere, so he got the drift, changed tune and started bashing President Uhuru.”

As MKF makes a tactical retreat in its support for Azimio, it is not only Kimemia who has changed his tune; many of the politicians from the Azimio camp seeking elective posts in Mt Kenya are careful not to mention Azimio or even Raila’s name in their campaign rallies.