Kenya

Let me add my voice of congratulations to President Sheikha Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa on her assumption of this driving seat, which has mainly been occupied by men in the history of the United Nations. Before this Assembly last week, we welcomed the first African woman to become a national President — Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia. At last, the glass ceiling that has tended to frustrate the attempts of women to become presidents is surely cracking in several places. We should celebrate that. Let me also congratulate Ambassador Jan Eliasson of Sweden for a job well done as President of this Assembly. Kenya is a United Nations country. We attach special significance to our being hosts of the biggest United Nations centre outside the developed world — the United Nations Office at Nairobi, which also hosts the global headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme. We are a major 06-53615 14 contributor to United Nations peace missions around the world. We subscribe to the principles and ideals of this Organization and have always upheld its Charter. In my contribution to this general debate, allow me to dwell on the crisis that is Somalia. I do not think that I need to remind the world that there is a crisis in Somalia, but I believe that I must encourage the community of nations to understand that the problem of Somalia is not going to go away unless we take deliberate steps to address the crisis. The comfortable thing to do is to look at Somalia as being far away and hope that the problem will resolve itself somehow. This afternoon, I bring the bad news that the problem of Somalia is not going to get resolved somehow by itself. All of us, the community of nations, must chip in. If, for a moment, we dwell on the comforting notion that Somali does not concern us, then it may be worth talking to my friends from South Korea or China, which are 8,000 to 10,000 kilometres away from Somalia. A few months ago, pirates from Somalia hijacked merchant ships in international waters off the coast of Somalia. It was only after protracted negotiations that included use of Kenyan intelligence that the merchant seamen from South Korea and China were released safely to their families. I recount this story of merchant seamen so that all of us in the international community should appreciate that the Somali phenomenon, with no Government in place, is a danger not just to neighbouring countries, but to the whole world. As criminal elements establish their safe enclaves in a country like Somalia, the neighbouring countries and the international community are soon forced to intervene, even militarily, to free hostages, to hunt terrorists or to flush out rebels. In the new global village, we are all neighbours of Somalia. As a front-line State to that country in crisis, we have participated in negotiations to free hostages. We have cooperated in attempts to arrest criminal elements. We continue to host close to a million refugees. We provide life-saving support in terms of medical facilities and supplies. But above all, we continue to work on efforts to create peace in Somalia. The Transitional Federal Government, the Transitional Charter and the Transitional Federal Parliament were established all as a result of a process that took place in Nairobi when we hosted up to 2,000 representatives from a cross-section of Somalia over a period of two years. Today, I appeal to the rest of the world to take deliberate steps to help Somalia. The time to help is now. Tomorrow may be too late. There are many communities around the world that attach great importance to funerals. In those communities, most people only stand by and watch when their kin have fallen ill. An occasional visit and some token of support are what obtains. As soon as the patient dies, an avalanche of support flows in. The community of nations must not take that cynical or undertaker’s approach. We are already too late, and any intervention we implement now is of an ambulance- and-fire-brigade variety, at best, but it is better than simply standing by like spectators. Somalia is almost dying. We can see it. We have known that for the past 16 years. This is the time to send in life-saving support. It is really a tribute to the resilience of the Somali people that there are still living human beings in that country. One day or one month without Government, police, hospitals or banks in modern society is unimaginable. The Somalis have endured for 16 years. How much longer are they expected to endure? Where is the international rescue plan with a billion dollars? Where is the Marshall Plan for Somalia? Even a much better but devastated Japan and Germany needed a Marshall Plan after the Second World War. We in our region are sure that humanitarian intervention now will yield better and faster results than military intervention and at a much cheaper price than sending troops to pursue criminal elements in a failed State. That is not rocket science or complex economic theory. That is common sense. All we need is the will and the focus to apply ourselves collectively to the problem of Somalia. I appreciate how difficult it is to be focused, given the several competing issues around the world, but focused we must be if we are to avoid the current flip-flopping from one crisis to another like chickens with their heads cut off. I hear talk today about religious extremists in Somalia. What did we expect? Our own seven-year-old children become extremists in our households if they go without food for one day. Somali children, youth, women and men have been going hungry for 16 years and living under very difficult circumstances. To be extremist is the normal human reaction in such 15 06-53615 circumstances and one does not have to have studied psychiatry at the PhD level to recognize that. If similar circumstances in Somalia prevailed in other countries, we all know that moderation would be the exception. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to brief the Security Council on the position of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) on Somalia. Our IGAD position is to support the Transitional Federal Government, together with such legitimate transitional federal institutions as the Parliament in Baidoa and the Transitional Charter that is the broadly negotiated road map for Somalia. As IGAD, we have also opened a window of dialogue with the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). Some four weeks ago, I met representatives of the ICU in Nairobi. We believe that, as in all situations of conflict, the final resolution is best achieved through dialogue. That is why, in our communiqué issued in Nairobi, we welcomed the Khartoum talks that brought together the Transitional Federal Government and the ICU. But we are also concerned that communiqués after these dialogue conferences should be genuine. Soon after the Khartoum meeting, the news from Somalia has not been encouraging. There was an assassination attempt on the life of President Yusuf. One more city was overtaken by the ICU, not to mention the cold-blooded murder of a long-serving humanitarian worker, a dedicated Catholic nun. The upbeat communiqué released from Khartoum begins to look like a sandwich without meat, fed to a world that is starved of any encouraging news from Somalia. There is a critical path that was set up by IGAD with the help of the international community and that resulted in the formation of the Somali Transitional Charter that is recognized by the African Union and the United Nations. We are encouraged by the United Nations positive endorsement of the Transitional Charter, which includes the Transitional Federal Government and the Transitional Federal Parliament. Indeed, the Transitional Federal Government is fully accredited to the United Nations, the African Union and IGAD, and the presidency of the Security Council has articulated that recognition through its various communications, including the presidential statement of 13 July. However, there is a major obstacle faced by the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia. Without substantive international support beyond the recognitions, accreditations, resolutions and statements I have alluded to, the bottom line remains that the Transitional Federal Government is like people thrown into the deep end of turbulent waters and are expected to swim with their hands tied behind their backs while hungry crocodiles surround them. It is not a very encouraging scenario. That is why we appeal for more meaningful support for the Transitional Federal Government, even as we insist that it continue to dialogue with various groupings in Somalia. The international community must work to help Somalia and not inadvertently compound the problem in that country. It is vital that the international community consolidate its efforts and not send discordant messages from Stockholm, New York, Nairobi, Khartoum, Cairo, Addis Ababa or anywhere else. Whatever the motives behind the proliferation of initiatives from different capitals, we must recognize that discordant signals act only to give incentive to some of the actors on the ground to attempt to establish new facts on the ground that they may leverage in future negotiations. I discussed that matter with the Secretary-General of the Arab League this morning and yesterday. Kenya has put forward the following proposal, which I would like to share with the General Assembly. We propose that an international joint committee on Somalia be constituted with the following membership: IGAD, representing the front-line States; the African Union; the Arab League, also representing the front-line States; the European Union; and the United Nations, with at least one or two permanent members of the Security Council to be included. It is our submission that the international joint commission will help consolidate our efforts and bring about a speedier resolution of the problem. It is worth noting that the initiative that resulted in the formation of the current Transitional Federal Government was the fourteenth attempt to resolve the Somali conflict after 14 years. Its collapse would bring us back to square one in terms of coming up with an institutional framework that enjoys political legitimacy. The Secretary-General of the Arab League has expressed his support for the Kenyan proposal and we hope that we can proceed on that path by building on the foundations already established by IGAD, rather than allow another proliferation of vertical initiatives. We appeal to other partners to embrace the proposal. 06-53615 16 On a more hopeful note, let me register our delight at the progress made by our neighbours Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa in brokering the Burundi peace agreement. We commend their collective effort. The news from the Democratic Republic of the Congo is also encouraging. As Kenya takes over the chairmanship of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, which will convene in December this year, let me assure the Assembly that we will do our best to contribute to the stabilization of our region, which is really a very tough neighbourhood to live in. Finally, let me congratulate Secretary-General Kofi Annan on his exemplary stewardship of this world body. As a brother from Africa, I can confidently say that he has done us proud.