Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the country’s delayed elections with an overwhelming majority on July 11, 2021.
Polls were not held in the war-torn Tigray region, where many thousands are living in famine conditions.
In all, a fifth of the country failed to take part in voting owing to insecurity and logistical problems.
When Abiy Ahmed launched an offensive against rebel forces in the northern Tigray region in November last year, he vowed that the fighting would be over in mere weeks. But this is far-fetched.
Tigrayan rebels have rebounded, taking on thousands of new volunteers, and on June 28, they entered the regional capital after Ethiopian forces retreated.
Over the past eight months, the conflict has led to thousands of deaths, displaced 1.7 million people, and led to charges of atrocities — including ethnic cleansing and horrific sexual violence — mostly committed by government forces and their allies.
To this end, President Uhuru Kenyatta on Monday held bilateral talks with the United Nations (U.N) Secretary General Antonio Guterres at the UN Headquarters in New York.
The President and his host agreed to continue engaging the Ethiopian government and other actors in the internal conflict with a view of finding a lasting solution to the crisis.
Uhuru is in the US on a two-day official visit, and the UN boss discussed several subjects of global importance among them the security and humanitarian crises in Haiti and Ethiopia’s Tigray region as well as preparations for the forthcoming UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland.
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On the political and humanitarian situation in Haiti, the President and Mr Guteress resolved to continue rallying the international community to stand in solidarity with the people of the troubled Carribean nation as it navigates its way out of the current crisis.
Haiti’s political crisis worsened after Prime Minister Ariel Henry in September sacked the chief public prosecutor who had accused him of links to the assassination of President Jovenel Moise on July 7.
Henry’s decision to fire prosecutor Bed-Ford Claude has exposed the infighting at the highest levels of what is left of Haiti’s government, more than three months after Moise was shot dead by assassins who stormed his private residence in the hills above Port-au-Prince.
President Kenyatta affirmed Kenya’s commitment to the attainment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and assured Mr Guteress of the country’s determination to continue working with his office in advancing the United Nations agenda globally.
On Tuesday, the Head of State will chair a UN Security Council session on diversity, state building and peace before participating in an International Peace Institute’s Global Leaders’ discussion on the UN Secretary General’s Common Agenda report.
