US Appoints David Young As The US Deputy Ambassador to Zambia
The United States Embassy in Lusaka has announced that David Young has arrived in Zambia to serve in the capacity of Chargé d’Affaires, the position of a deputy to the Ambassador.
Mr. Young will return to Zambia, where he served as Chargé d’Affaires and Deputy Chief of Mission from 2013-2016. From 2019-2020 he served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Pretoria, South Africa, and from 2016-2019 as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria.
A Foreign Service Officer for 30 years, Mr. Young has also served as Deputy Director of the Office of the U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan; Executive Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights; a Pearson Fellow in the House of Representatives; Public Affairs Officer at Embassy Guatemala; and Director of the Office of International Religious Freedom.
The US Government has still not replaced the recalled ambassador to Zambia, Daniel Foote, amid a diplomatic row after he criticized the imprisonment of a Kapiri Mposhi Gay couple.
Mr. Foote left Zambia after the government asked Washington to recall the ambassador because of his “inappropriate comments,”
Zambian President Edgar Lungu went public saying he wanted the U.S. ambassador to leave Zambia after Mr. Foote criticized the African state for sentencing a gay couple to 15 years behind bars for having a consensual relationship.
“We have complained officially to the American government, and we are waiting for their response because we don’t want such people in our midst,” Lungu said told ZNBC at the time. “We want him gone.”
In a statement before his departure, Foote called on Zambia to protect its reputation as a democracy and “avoid degradation of your own citizens’ human, economic, and political rights.”
Same-sex relationships are illegal in Zambia. In November last year, Foote spoke out against a verdict that handed couple Japhet Chataba and Steven Samba prison sentences for being in a same-sex relationship.
“I was personally horrified to read yesterday about the sentencing of two men, who had a consensual relationship, which hurt absolutely no one, to 15 years’ imprisonment,” Foote wrote at the time.
The diplomat has said he was also targeted after he skipped a World AIDS Day event in protest of the government’s conduct.
In 2019, the administration of US President Donald Trump said it would lead a push to end laws criminalizing homosexual relationships around the world.
