“We Do Not Beg for Our Rivers”: Ethiopia’s UN Diplomacy and the Rise of a New Voice!
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By Ethiopian Tribune | 29 September 2025
In the vast echo chamber of the United Nations General Assembly, where nations routinely posture, preen, and occasionally prostrate themselves, Ethiopia once more seized the microphone. But this time, not to beg. Rather, to remind. The provocation? Egypt’s latest theatrical attempt to internationalise its opposition to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). The riposte? A withering, historically erudite rebuttal delivered by Ethiopia’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Yoseph Kassaye.
Yet this was rather more than a diplomatic dust-up. It was a moment of symbolic reckoning, one voice rising with crystalline clarity, another floundering in befuddlement.
Ambassador Yoseph’s intervention was forensic, assertive, and magnificently unapologetic in its nationalism. Exercising Ethiopia’s Right of Reply with the precision of a surgeon wielding a scalpel, he systematically dismantled Egypt’s “unfounded and misleading” assertions, exposing their roots in colonial-era treaties that rather conveniently excluded most Nile Basin countries. “Whilst Ethiopia seeks to develop the Nile to uphold the basic human rights of its people,” he declared, “Egypt insists on denying these necessities through outdated claims of monopoly.” The moral weight was unmistakable: clean water, food security, and electricity as inalienable rights, not privileges to be rationed by downstream hegemons.
His tone transcended mere diplomacy, it was genuinely global. Fluent, firm, and steeped in historical literacy, Yoseph’s delivery carried the rhetorical DNA of Ethiopia’s finest envoys. No hedging. No dilution. No death by a thousand qualifications. He spoke as though the Nile itself had summoned him to its defence.
Yoseph drew a stark, and frankly devastating, contrast between Ethiopia’s inclusive approach to GERD and Egypt’s decidedly unilateral construction of the Aswan High Dam, which displaced entire communities and erased ancient civilisations beneath its waters. “There is no parallel comparison,” he observed, with just the faintest hint of understatement. “Our determination to cooperate stems from the inherently just nature of our cause.” This framing, development as justice, cooperation as strength, has become the hallmark of Ethiopia’s diplomatic posture. It’s not merely about water. It’s about memory, dignity, and the steadfast refusal to remain shackled by colonial shadows that grow longer the further Cairo tries to cast them.
In a refreshingly rare move, Ambassador Yoseph accused Egypt of fuelling regional instability through arms shipments and political interference. This wasn’t simply a defence of GERD it was a broader indictment of systematic sabotage. Ethiopia’s message rang clear as a bell: peace cannot be constructed atop coercion, and diplomacy must not serve as an elaborate smokescreen for subversion. One rather suspects the Egyptian delegation wasn’t expecting quite so much candour with their morning coffee.
Contrast this with the address delivered by Ethiopia’s current president himself a former UN ambassador, which makes the comparison all the more poignant. He began in Amharic, a gesture that might have stirred pride, before pivoting into a hesitant, meandering English delivery. The tonal shift proved jarring. The cadence lacked conviction. The phrasing felt bureaucratic rather than galvanising. And the message? A rather impenetrable fog of platitudes, utterly devoid of the moral clarity Ethiopia’s position demands and deserves.
Most strikingly, when referencing Ethiopia’s principled stance in the early 1950s, the president seemed almost allergic to invoking the name of Emperor Haile Selassie I. Yes, that Haile Selassie, the very man who, in 1936, electrified the League of Nations with a speech that still reverberates through the annals of anti-colonial resistance. The Emperor’s UN addresses weren’t merely diplomatic, they were declarations of moral warfare. They named injustice. They summoned history. They pierced through institutional apathy like a clarion call. This president, by painful contrast, tiptoed around legacy as though it were radioactive. His reluctance to channel Ethiopia’s storied defiance, its refusal to be colonised, its historic role as Africa’s moral conscience—was palpable, even embarrassing. The speech fell miles short of the rhetorical lineage it ought to have inherited by birthright. In a moment that desperately called for thunder, we received drizzle. Tepid drizzle at that.
From Emperor Haile Selassie’s searing 1936 denunciation of fascist invasion to Ambassador Yoseph’s 2025 rebuttal of neo-colonial hydropolitics, Ethiopia has consistently wielded the UN platform not to plead, but to proclaim. Each ambassador, whether permanent or deputy, has carried the torch of Ethiopian nationalism, not as mere slogan, but as calculated strategy. Yoseph Kassaye now joins that distinguished lineage—not simply as a diplomat, but as a prospective leader whose voice carries both the gravitas of history and the clarity of vision. In a world drowning in scripted ambiguity, he speaks with the precision of a surgical instrument and the resonance of traditional drums echoing across the highlands.
Despite the fire in his rhetoric, Ambassador Yoseph concluded with an olive branch, albeit one proffered with considerable dignity: “Hostility only breeds division and squandered opportunities… Ethiopia remains steadfastly committed to building a future of shared prosperity with all Nile Basin countries.” It served as a timely reminder that Ethiopian patriotism isn’t isolationist, it’s principled. It seeks peace, certainly, but never at the expense of dignity. It offers cooperation, but emphatically not under duress. Rather refreshing, wouldn’t you say?
