There was shock and condemnation Saturday after Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, sanctioned by the United States over human rights abuses, was named a “goodwill ambassador” for the World Health Organization.
Mugabe, the world’s oldest head of state at 93, has also been criticized at home for going overseas for medical treatment as Zimbabwe’s once-prosperous economy falls apart.
“The decision to appoint Robert Mugabe as a WHO goodwill ambassador is deeply disappointing and wrong,” said Dr Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, a major British charitable foundation. “Robert Mugabe fails in every way to represent the values WHO should stand for.”
Ireland’s health minister, Simon Harris, called the appointment “offensive, bizarre.”
”Not the Onion,” tweeted the head of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, in a reference to the satirical news site.
WHO director-general Tedros Ghebreyesus of Ethiopia announced the appointment at a conference in Uruguay on non-communicable diseases.
Tedros, who this year became WHO’s first African director-general, said Mugabe could use the role “to influence his peers in his region” on the issue. He described Zimbabwe as “a country that places universal health coverage and health promotion at the center of its policies.” A WHO spokeswoman confirmed the comments to The Associated Press.
Two dozen organizations — including the World Heart Federation, Action Against Smoking and Cancer Research U.K. — released a statement slamming the appointment, saying health officials were “shocked and deeply concerned” and citing his “long track record of human rights violations.”
The groups said they had raised their concerns with Tedros on the sidelines of the conference, to no avail. U.N. agencies typically choose celebrities as ambassadors to draw attention to issues of concern, but they hold little actual power.
Zimbabwe’s government has not commented, but the state-run Zimbabwe Herald newspaper called the appointment a “new feather in president’s cap.”
The southern African nation once was known as the region’s prosperous breadbasket. But in 2008, the charity Physicians for Human Rights released a report documenting failures in Zimbabwe’s health system, saying Mugabe’s policies had led to a man-made crisis.
The U.S. in 2003 imposed targeted sanctions, a travel ban and an asset freeze against Mugabe and close associates, citing his government’s rights abuses and evidence of electoral fraud.