Liberia is squandering the moral authority it claims at the UN

For the past nine months, Liberia has used its experiences of prolonged armed conflict to serve as a principled voice in United Nations debates about the humanitarian consequences of a number of the most intractable geopolitical crises – from Gaza and Sudan to Ukraine and Iran.Yet, hidden beneath this virtuous veneer lies a troubling contradiction. As my country prepares to assume the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council (UNSC) in December as a non-permanent member, it is flouting our Constitution and contravening UN conventions by hosting deportees expelled from the United States.A year before its current charm offensive across the Atlantic – where a delegation led by the president is now courting American lawmakers in Washington and broadcasting its peace and security agenda at UN General Assembly convenings in New York – Liberia signed an agreement on September 10, 2025 with the Trump administration to accommodate an undisclosed number of third-country nationals deported from the US.Since January 2025, the Trump administration has struck deportation agreements with 35 countries, almost a third of them in Africa, to receive foreigners whose US immigration statuses range...