It is a great pleasure to address
the General Assembly at its sixty-ninth session. As the
current Chairman of the East African Community, I am
particularly pleased to see The Honourable Sam Kutesa
preside over the General Assembly. I assure you,
Mr. President, of the full support of my Government
during your presidency.
I would like to begin by lending my voice to all of
those who have called for urgent and sustained attention
to the devastating Ebola crisis in Liberia, Sierra Leone
and Guinea. Beyond the tragedy of the thousands who
have lost lives and loved ones and the many more
living with that threat, livelihoods and businesses have
collapsed and aspirations for shared prosperity continue
to shrink day by day. Kenya stands in solidarity with
the countries affected by this devastating virus.
Earlier this month the Kenyan people gave
$1 million to the effort to bring the crisis under control,
and we stand ready to do more. Last week, ministers
of health from the East Africa region converged in
Nairobi and agreed on measures to safeguard our
populations and ensure that the virus does not spread
in our region. The suspension of international flights
into Monrovia and other affected capitals, including
by Kenya Airways, followed a stark warning from the
World Health Organization (WHO). Those measures,
among others, have isolated the affected countries and
further hurt the people and economies of the region.
With regard to Kenya, our intention was not to
do harm, but the warning from the WHO left us, as
a regional hub, with few options. We stand ready
to resume Kenya Airways flights once appropriate
measures are put in place. Kenya believes that nothing
in the immediate future requires more attention and
determined response from the international community
than the effort to stop and contain that devastating
virus. I therefore welcome the establishment by the
Secretary-General of the United Nations Mission for
Ebola Emergency Response, which I am sure will guide
a collective global response.
The Ebola crisis underlines the imperative to build
strong States that can withstand crisis and respond to
emergencies. State weakness in many African countries
comes from a history of development paradigms and
practices that weakened the State. We must commit
to building strong, resilient and accountable States
that can effectively respond to shocks, adversities and
emergencies in the future.
You, Sir, are presiding over a session of the General
Assembly of historic significance to humankind. The
sixty-ninth session will oversee the development and
adoption of the post-2015 development agenda. This
effort will build on the work of the Open Working Group
on Sustainable Development Goals, which developed
those goals. Kenya is indeed proud to have been at the
forefront of driving the Open Working Group process.
The new world development agenda must address
itself to the entire cross-section of social, economic
and environmental challenges that face the world in
the twenty-first century. Issues of sustained economic
development, equality among nations, climate change,
industrialization, biodiversity loss and environmental
protection must now go hand in glove with the traditional
challenges of poverty, disease, hunger and inequality
within nations. The new agenda must therefore be
universal and comprehensive and responsive to all
nations equally in order to be transformative in its
impact.
We in Kenya recognize, however, that a number
of obstacles stand in the way of achieving the new
development agenda. The most immediate of these are
terrorism and violent extremism. In Kenya, we stand
at a critical moment. As we deepen our democracy, we
find our nation thrust onto the front line of a regional
and global war against terror. We have become acutely
aware that the interplay between democratization, on
the one hand, and effective counter-terrorism, on the
other, presents severe challenges to our security and
our governance institutions. Increasingly, terrorist
actors are exploiting the expanded democratic space,
sometimes feeding into and even influencing local
politics. Unless we can provide an effective buffer to
fight back against that tendency, Kenya and indeed other
countries will find it difficult to entrench democracy
and the post-2015 development agenda.
Besides the immediate threat of terrorism, the state
of economic and social well-being is also affected by
the lack of sustainable peace and security in many
of our countries. From the Central African Republic
to Mali, Libya and even as far afield as the Middle
East and Europe, we see new conflicts and crises that
could derail or delay development. In Kenya, we are
particularly concerned by the perennial fragility that
has come to characterize the greater Horn of Africa.
In Somalia, Kenya continues to sacrifice lives
and resources in an effort to bring peace to our
neighbour. We do this trusting that the international
community will stay the course in Somalia. This
involves consolidating peace and investing in stable,
responsive national institutions that guarantee public
safety, promote democracy and civil liberties, as well
as development and peace in the country and region.
As we meet here, South Sudan also remains
in turmoil. Kenya and other countries of the
Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)
have invested considerable effort in ending that tragedy
and sparing the people of South Sudan further suffering.
Regrettably, however, progress has been slow. We
cannot let that young nation and its people down. At
this session of the Assembly, I make a special plea for
South Sudan, for no nation has, over the years, suffered
as much neglect from the international community.
Similarly, no country today remains as desperately
in need of rapid and transformative economic and
social development as South Sudan. We cannot allow
a return to political chaos, economic collapse or social
desperation. I implore the leaders of that young nation
to demonstrate determined and enlightened leadership
and to make peace without further delay. Such action
will save the people of the nation enormous suffering
and offer hope of a better future. I thank the Security
Council for its continued cooperation with IGAD in the
search for peace in South Sudan. It is this concert of
action that will help to bring about lasting peace, which
in turn will form the basis for a transformative post-
2015 development agenda for South Sudan and all of its
neighbours.
On the continent of Africa the development
model of the past 50 years has run its course. That
outmoded model was defined by negative trade
relations, paternalistic global governance regimes
and overreliance on official development assistance.
Moreover, it was driven by external prescriptions for
development that were heavy on political instruction,
but light on economic and social transformation.
We now know better. We know that our social
and economic transformation shall come first from
within our nations, our region and our continent, and
only secondly from the complement of external ideas
and resources. Equally important, those external
contributions must recognize the primacy of our
aspirations and ideas. They must value and safeguard,
rather than simply exploit and consume, our domestic
resources and the product of our people’s labour. For
the post-2015 development agenda to be transformative,
therefore, it must first embrace the primacy of
developing countries whose people seek sustained
development most. Anything less will be a recipe for
failure.
We cannot speak of development or of
transformation when millions of the world’s people
are mired in and are broken by unrelenting poverty,
disease and hunger. The business of ridding the world
of those plagues, touched upon but not fully embraced
by the Millennium Development Goals, must be the
first of the aspirations of the post-2015 development
agenda. Equally important, it must be fully financed
and accelerated, if we are to lay the groundwork for a
transformative agenda for the next generation. I cannot
emphasize that point enough. The scourge and shame of
debilitating poverty, preventable diseases and chronic
hunger must be erased from our global civilization. In
reaching the sustainable development goals we have set
ourselves, within a time frame of 15 years, we must not
fail.
This year, at the United Nations, Kenya is proud
to have presided over the Conference of States Parties
to the Convention on the Rights for Persons with
Disabilities. Kenya also presided over the United
Nations Forum on Forests and co-chaired the Open
Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals.
Kenya is currently presiding over the UNICEF Board,
as it seeks to provide global leadership for issues of
concern to the world’s children and their well-being.
Kenya is a member in good standing of the
international community and it intends to continue to
shoulder its global and regional responsibilities. Kenya
is especially proud of the scores of Kenyans who work
for the United Nations here in New York, but also further
afield in peacemaking, peacekeeping, peacebuilding
and in many United Nations organizations in various
United Nations stations around the world, including
Nairobi. I salute all those Kenyans — every single one
of them — for their dedication and commitment. We in
Kenya believe that no nation is too poor or too rich, too
big or too small to play its rightful role in making the
world a better place for all.
At the national level, Kenya grounds her
transformative agenda on a strategic vision — our Vision
2030. Importantly, in 2010 we adopted a new democratic
Constitution, which expanded and guaranteed a
wider range of rights for our people and defined
new institutions for the advancement of those rights.
Drawing on that, we have re-engineered our system
of governance, making it more democratic, inclusive,
devolved and responsive. We have also significantly
expanded participation in political and development
decision-making.
In four short years, we have begun to witness the
fruits of those foundational changes. Aware of the
imperative to carry along all our people in development,
my Government launched targeted interventions for the
most vulnerable in society. Those include a number
of financial initiatives and training programmes
for women and youth. We have also prioritized the
advancement of children’s rights and welfare through
initiatives that reduce mortality and morbidity. Chief
among them are universal immunization coverage, the
promotion of breast-feeding for the first six months
of a child’s life, the provision of fortified foods and
insecticide-treated mosquito nets, as well as free care
for mothers and children in all government hospitals.
In that respect, I wish to commend the first Lady
of Kenya, Ms. Margaret Kenyatta, for successfully
launching the Beyond Zero Campaign that is tapping
into private sector financing to bolster the management
of chronic preventable diseases, including HIV/AIDS,
and to improve maternal and child health throughout
the country.
Kenya is today on track to achieve universal
primary education. Based on that, we have expanded
our vision to include universal secondary education. We
are seeking to build a more inclusive society, and strive
to leave no one behind. It is for that reason that my
Government has implemented a social protection cash
transfer programme to orphans and vulnerable children,
persons with severe disabilities and our elderly citizens.
The programme targets 450,000 households throughout
Kenya. Impact evaluations indicate that the programme
has reduced poverty, improved family health and raised
school enrolment.
As the Assembly is aware, Kenya is a leading
tourist destination. We are also endowed with a number
of rare species, some endangered, which we hold in
trust for humankind. My Government attaches great
value to conservation. We continue to raise awareness
of the need to step up the fight against poaching and
illicit wildlife trafficking. We have enacted laws to
help fight the scourge, and continue to work with other
countries and organizations to enhance the protection
of our fauna and flora. Similarly, Kenya remains at the
heart of international efforts to mitigate and adapt to
challenges relating to climate change. We continue to
work towards achieving 10-per cent forest cover; we are
well above global targets for renewable energy use, and
fully support all measures agreed upon at the recent
United Nations Environmental Assembly in Nairobi.
Recognizing that our prosperity is linked to that
of our neighbours, Kenya is engaged in a range of
programmes and activities to hasten eastern African
integration. We have eased the movement of goods
and services across our borders. More importantly, our
people can travel, work and settle across east Africa.
We have also grown our trade volumes and are looking
to closer integration across a range of other sectors.
Those are a few highlights of my Government’s
transformative agenda. We are committed to
safeguarding and expanding those initiatives by creating
an enabling and secure environment. In light of that,
my Government continues to invest heavily to combat
extremists and terrorists. The global effort needs to be
reinforced because, as we know, the intent of terrorists
is to destroy free, secure and democratic nations and
people. As long as international terrorism exploits our
open, multicultural and multi-religious society and
gravely harms our social fabric, our progress towards
achieving the goals of a transformative agenda will no
doubt be slowed.
Kenya believes in a better, happier and more
prosperous future for all. It is my hope that the confluence
of forces that have come together to continually make
our development efforts unnecessarily difficult will
be persuaded with urgency, to reassess their motives
and hopefully re-engage within the global community
and with our country and region in a more positive,
constructive and humane manner; recognizing that, in
the end, no one people, nor one country, not even any
one continent, can inhabit the world peaceably alone
in isolation from the rest of the globe. We are in this
world together to succeed together, to win together and
to build a better future for all everywhere, together.