Kenya’s lessons as October president of UN Security Council

At the start of October, as Kenya prepared to take over the rotational presidency of the United Nations Security Council, its permanent representative in New York, Martin Kimani, tried to explain why it mattered for ordinary folk.

“The way the Security Council works is of immediate interest to our country. Being here at the UN Security Council can sometimes feel very distant from the challenges Kenyans face in their daily lives,” Dr Kimani said.

“But peace protects every Kenyan every day. It protects our property…and the UN Security Council is the premier body for the protection of this national peace in our lives.”

Africa, Nairobi had argued, had often been the subject of the Council’s meetings lately but that the continent had had little or no say on the outcomes. And so, Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Raychelle Omamo told diplomats in Nairobi that Kenya wanted to be “a safe pair of hands”.

A month later, though, what exactly have been Kenya’s achievements as president of the world’s most powerful political organ?

“It has been a very gratifying and rewarding and successful experience. And Kenya has proven its mettle and demonstrated outstanding diplomatic capabilities at the global level,” Foreign Affairs PS Macharia Kamau told the Nation on Thursday last week.

“We have stood up to challenges far and wide. From Haiti to Sudan to Ethiopia to South Sudan to the Middle East, the Balkans and other places in the world. We have taken up important issues that have to do with the core causes of insecurity in the world, including the management of social diversity and the issues of integration of women in society.”

Kenya had promised to lead the Council on issues of regional peace and security, especially cooperation between the UN and regional blocs, peace support operations, counterterrorism and violent extremism, as well as climate and security.

This month, Kenya led the Council to the Sahel, where troubled Mali and neighbouring Niger are struggling with insurgencies, on top of their own domestic political uncertainties. It discussed the Great Lakes region as well, where leaders agreed smuggling of natural resources had fuelled conflict in the Congo and neighbouring regions.

President Uhuru Kenyatta also became the first Kenyan leader to preside over a UN Security Council meeting in New York as Kenya held all its four ‘signature’ events as planned.

The President rallied the continent to come to the rescue of Haiti, “in the spirit of pan-Africanism”. The actual response may be measured later than this month.

On Friday, Kenya led the Council to extend the mandate of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (Minurso) until October next year under Resolution 2602/2021. But this decision was just another reflection of divisions in the Council on the future of a territory contested by Morocco, but controlled partially by a separate administration of the Polisario Front.

Russia and Tunisia abstained from the vote, technically saying they weren’t objecting but could not register an approval either. In fact, since 2017, resolutions on Minurso had never received unanimous votes. This one on Friday was endorsed as the Council asked parties to resume negotiations without preconditions for a political solution providing for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara mediated by Staffan de Mistura, the new personal envoy of the Secretary-General for Western Sahara.

Kenya had demanded clarity on self-determination as the final goal of the negotiations as well as reporting on human rights. They were included, but Nairobi felt the language had been diluted.

“We are glad that these issues were included in the resolution although the language could have been stronger in reflecting the previously agreed positions that are clear on the goal being a referendum on self-determination,” explained the Kenyan delegation, in a statement after the vote on Friday.

This wasn’t the only point of frustration. The Council’s response to emerging and continuing crises was generally lethargic and most of the issues facing the continent at the start of October were unresolved by the end of it.

At the start of the month, the Council had lacked a stronger stance on Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict, South Sudan’s continuing violence and other troubled hotspots such as Guinea and Afghanistan. By the end of last week, Sudan had returned to be the Council’s new headache after the military engineered a coup, aided by Gulf countries.

The Council’s members haggled over a joint statement for three days and when they did agree on one, they fell short of calling it a coup, but rather as a “military takeover”.

That lack of consensus, officials say, is a signal that the global body is not working well with regional blocs to resolve crises.

“The inability of the Security Council to make a statement so far is an indication that the way the Security Council and the African Union Peace and Security Council work together could be made better and stronger,” Dr Kimani told the media at a state-out on Wednesday night.

“I very much hope that the UN Security Council could consider this step by the AU Peace and Security to be a challenge to step up,” Dr Kimani said on Wednesday, after the AU suspended Sudan from its activities. The UN Security Council could not agree on a joint statement until Thursday evening.

And members differed on whether what happened in Sudan was a coup.

“Maybe we have different approaches of what is the coup, but I don’t think we have differences on the violence,” Dimitri Polyanskiy, Russia’s first deputy representative to the UN, told a media stake-out on Wednesday.

“When people are attacked and killed - it doesn’t matter whether it is military, police or civilian - it is unacceptable.” Russia believed civilian protesters had not been peaceful either, calling for their condemnation as well.

Shortly after the coup, UNSC members, including the UK, known as the penholder for Sudan at the Council, requested closed consultations. France and Norway supported the meeting as did Kenya, Niger, Tunisia and the Caribbean representative St Vincent and the Grenadines, often known as A3+1 and who totally endorsed AU’s stand to reject the military takeover.

Kenya, though, says at least the Council agreed on common positions on the DRC’s UN stabilisation mission, as well as on the Central Africa Republic, where a ceasefire was agreed on four weeks ago.