Germany and France along with other European Union nations have nominated WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus for a second term at the post. This is the first that a candidate has not been nominated by the home country for the top post at the UN Health Agency.

Tedros, who goes by his first name, has been in the global focus over the organization's response to the Covid-19 pandemic over the last 19 months -- an epochal crisis that eclipsed all else throughout his term that began in 2017. The election for the next WHO director-general, which carries a five-year term, takes place at the agency's next annual assembly meeting in May. Tedros has run afoul of the Ethiopian government of Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed over his outspokenness about killings and other human rights abuses in his home region of Tigray.

Tedros was formerly a top official in the Tigray People's LiberationFront, once a dominant member of a coalition running Ethiopia but now designated by the national government as a terrorist group. Tedros also served as health and foreign minister in the previous Ethiopian government. The diplomatic missions of France and Germany to UN institutions in Geneva announced their support for Tedros on their Twitter feeds after a deadline for candidacies for the director-general post expired on Thursday.

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