Kenya wins a non-permanent seat at UN Security Council

It’s Kenya finally that got the vote to be on UN Security Council (UNSC) as a non-permanent member defeating Djibouti 129-62 in the second round of voting.

A minimum of 128 votes was needed to win a seat.

Both the countries did not get the two-thirds votes of the member states in the first round, which led to second-round voting.

Kenya will now replace South Africa in the Council and now joins India, Ireland, Norway and Mexico as non-permanent members of the UNSC for a two-year term starting January 2021.

The bitter diplomatic tussle between Kenya and Djibouti led to a split among the African nations on linguistic lines-Anglophone and Francophone.

Kenya was endorsed an African Candidate by the African Union, which Djibouti stressed the ‘principle of rotation’ and refused to accept the endorsement stating Kenya has been on the UNSC earlier too.

Tunisia and Niger are already non-permanent members in the UNSC whose terms end in 2022.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta in his final appeal before voting said his nation would use its term in the UNSC to advance the “PanAfrican agenda of global peace, solidarity, and multilateralism.”

The Security Council has 10 non-permanent members in addition to the veto-wielding Big Five – Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States.

The post Kenya wins a non-permanent seat at UN Security Council first appeared on The African Gazette.