Uited Nation’s migration agency has placed Ethiopia’s top official on administrative leave, citing “unauthorised interviews” in which she complained of being ignored by UN higher-ups who she alleged were sympathetic to Tigrayan rebels.
The departure of Maureen Achieng, which was confirmed in a letter obtained by AFP on Monday, risks undercutting an assistance response that has already been rocked by Ethiopia’s decision last month to dismiss seven other senior UN officials for allegedly “interfering” in its affairs.
It comes after more than 11 months of a horrific war in northern Ethiopia that has pushed hundreds of thousands of people into famine-like conditions, according to UN estimates, and has generated growing international concern.
Last week, multiple recordings surfaced online of Achieng and another senior UN official granting a lengthy interview to Jeff Pearce, a writer who has published multiple articles defending the government’s conduct of the war against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
In the recordings, Achieng, the International Organisation for Migration’s chief of mission to Ethiopia, tears into colleagues who “descended on” Addis Ababa after the war erupted last November and, in her telling, sidelined officials on the ground.
She also calls the TPLF “dirty” and “vicious”, vowing never to return to Tigray.
At one point she accuses the rebels of plotting to have Tigrayan migrant workers facing deportation from Saudi Arabia sent to Rwanda.
“And then you don’t know what guerrilla movement starts from Rwanda. I mean, it’s dirty,” she says.
In an internal note to colleagues last week, also seen by AFP, Achieng said she was “deeply disturbed and disappointed” by the audio, which she said had been “surreptitiously recorded and selectively edited.”
However, at several points during the interview the participants openly discuss that it is being recorded.