The Secret Plot Against the Head of the World Health Organization
A cache of documents reveal an Ethiopian government investigation into Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. He calls it a ‘smear campaign.’
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, in Geneva in 2017.
Photographer: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images
They are two of the best-known African leaders on the planet. The 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, and his compatriot Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who as head of the World Health Organization became the face of the global response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Yet the two are now on opposite sides of a campaign exposed by previously undisclosed Ethiopian government documents that appear to show how the Abiy administration tried to discredit the global health leader with allegations of embezzlement and sexual misconduct ahead of his reappointment at the WHO in 2022. Tedros, who has denied all the allegations and hasn’t been charged with any crimes, says he is reluctant to return to his native Ethiopia — Africa’s second-most populous nation — without assurances that he and his family will be safe.