The African Union Commission has issued a new clarification of its October 1 statement after Egypt objected to the way the Commission had framed the escalating diplomatic crisis involving Ethiopia, Eritrea and Egypt.
The clarification corrects part of the problem. It does not resolve the part that directly concerns the African Union itself.
On October 1, the Commission said it was following “heightened tensions between Ethiopia, Eritrea and Egypt” and called on all three member states to exercise maximum restraint, refrain from escalatory actions or statements and resolve their differences through diplomatic channels.
Ethiopia had separately taken punitive diplomatic measures against both countries.
Addis Ababa announced the closure of its embassy in Asmara and declared ten Eritrean diplomats persona non grata, ordering them to leave within 48 hours. Ethiopia said the diplomats were involved in activities threatening its national security. Eritrea rejected those accusations and responded by severing diplomatic relations.
Ethiopia separately declared Egyptian diplomat Ahmed Moharam Ahmed Soliman persona non grata. Cairo subsequently ordered an Ethiopian diplomatic official to leave Egypt.
Yet the AU converted that chronology into a general warning to “all three Member States.”
Calling for restraint is not the problem. A continental organization trying to prevent escalation should call for restraint.
The problem is what disappears when chronology is replaced by symmetry.
Egypt objected.
An Egyptian official source described the AU’s formulation as an “incomprehensible attempt” to draw Egypt into an internal Ethiopian matter and said Cairo had no role in the fighting inside Ethiopia. Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty separately reiterated that Egypt was not interfering in Ethiopia’s internal conflict.
One day later, the AU Commission issued its clarification.
The Commission said its October 1 statement had not been intended to assign responsibility for developments inside Ethiopia to another state. It reaffirmed sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-interference and said its intervention had merely been intended as a call for de-escalation following the diplomatic expulsions.
It then went further, stressing the “particular importance” it attaches to its close relationship with Egypt and recognizing Cairo as a founding member of the continental organization and an important partner in peace, security, integration and development.
Egypt raised an objection. The Commission listened. The Commission clarified.
That makes the silence on Eritrea considerably harder to ignore.
Eritrea’s October 1 Foreign Ministry statement did not merely say that ten members of its diplomatic mission in Addis Ababa had been ordered out. It specified that the group included its chargé d’affaires and other Eritrean diplomats accredited to the African Union.
The AU cannot plausibly regard that detail as peripheral.
Only weeks earlier, on August 27, AU Commission Chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf personally met Eritrea’s Chargé d’Affaires Biniam Berhe. The AU’s own readout identified Berhe not only as Eritrea’s chargé d’affaires in Ethiopia but also as its Permanent Representative to the African Union.
That changes the institutional character of the dispute.
Ethiopia is entitled to conduct its bilateral diplomacy as a sovereign state. But Addis Ababa is also the headquarters of the African Union, and Ethiopia has obligations arising from that separate role as host of the continental organization.
The distinction is written into the AU’s own legal framework.
The 2008 Headquarters Agreement between the African Union and Ethiopia specifically addresses representatives of member states. Article 15 provides that representatives participating in AU work are entitled to diplomatic privileges and immunities while exercising their functions. It further provides that resident and temporarily accredited representatives of member states to the AU are entitled to the privileges and immunities Ethiopia accords diplomatic envoys accredited to the country.
The AU’s Protocol Services Directorate itself says it oversees the practical implementation of the Headquarters Agreement and related provisions governing diplomatic privileges and immunities.
This makes one conclusion unavoidable: the expulsion of an AU-accredited representative is not merely an Eritrea-Ethiopia bilateral matter.
It touches the institutional functioning of the African Union.
The AU has recognized that distinction before.
In 2015, the AU Executive Council specifically asked the Ethiopian government to investigate a complaint submitted by Eritrea concerning an alleged violation of the privileges and immunities of Eritrea’s Permanent Representative to the AU and his spouse at Bole International Airport. The same decision urged Ethiopia to fulfil its obligations under the Headquarters Agreement and called for regular mechanisms to resolve outstanding host-country issues.
There is therefore nothing novel about expecting the African Union to concern itself with the treatment of an Eritrean representative accredited to the organization.
It has done so before.
What is different now is the silence.
Mesob Journal has already reported the broader diplomatic escalation created by Ethiopia’s expulsion of the Eritrean diplomats and the subsequent action against Egypt. The latest AU clarification adds something new: it demonstrates that the Commission is capable of revisiting its language quickly when a member state challenges its framing.
That makes the unanswered Eritrean question more prominent, not less.
As of October 4, the Commission’s public statements acknowledge the diplomatic expulsions but do not explain what happened to Eritrea’s representation at the AU, whether the accreditation of the affected diplomats remains valid, whether the Commission raised the matter with Ethiopia, or what arrangements exist to ensure that Eritrea can continue exercising its rights as a member state independently of its bilateral rupture with the AU’s host country. A search of the AU’s published material produced the October 1 statement and the October 4 clarification, but no public explanation addressing those questions.
This is where a generic appeal for restraint becomes insufficient.
The African Union is not an outside observer operating from a neutral capital. Its headquarters sit in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia therefore occupies two positions simultaneously: sovereign member state and host of the continental institution.
Those roles cannot simply be collapsed whenever Ethiopia enters a bilateral dispute with another African state.
Otherwise a dangerous institutional question emerges. Can a disagreement between the host government and another member state affect that member’s ability to maintain representation before the organization that is supposed to belong equally to both?
That question goes far beyond Eritrea.
Every African state maintaining a permanent mission in Addis Ababa has an interest in the answer.
The Commission’s October 4 clarification repeatedly invokes sovereignty, territorial integrity, non-interference and institutional responsibility. Those principles should apply just as clearly when the issue reaches the doors of the African Union itself.
Egypt objected to being drawn into a crisis it said was not its own, and the AU clarified its position.
Eritrea faces a different issue. Officials representing it before the African Union were caught directly in Ethiopia’s diplomatic action.
That requires more than another appeal for everybody to exercise restraint.
It requires the African Union to explain where the authority of its host state ends and where the rights of an AU member state begin.
Until it does, the central problem in the Commission’s response remains unresolved.
The AU has clarified what it meant for Egypt. It has still not explained what Ethiopia’s expulsion of Eritrea’s AU-accredited diplomats means for the independence and credibility of the African Union itself.
