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Kenya: President Kenyatta Advocates for Democratization of Multilateral Organizations

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Antalya — President Uhuru Kenyatta has called for the democratization of multilateral organizations so as to ensure inclusivity in decision-making.

The President, who spoke Friday at an interactive session on governance at the ongoing Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Turkey, said changing how multilateral institutions such as the United Nations are managed will help in quicker resolution of global challenges such as Covid-19.

“It will really depend on us being able to change the global governance system. The manner in which the UN Security Council works, the manner in which the UN and its organizations work in order for us to determine as to whether we shall see change,” President Kenyatta said.

He observed that the global multilateral system was not operating optimally and expressed optimism that world leaders will through diplomacy and dialogue develop a new order that fosters inclusivity.

“We have seen that the global governance system is not actually working for equality and fairness for all global citizens, and I think it just draws us to the reality that we have a challenge and that the challenge can only be overcome if we democratize more our global governance systems, if we are more inclusive in our decision-making processes,” President Kenyatta said.

The Kenyan leader said the slow flow of Covid-19 vaccines into developing countries was indicative of the warped global multilateral system. He observed that the initial collaborative successes in the management of the pandemic have been negated by the unfair global distribution of the vaccines.

“We were also very active in the early stages, participating in the acts of companies and corporations that were developing vaccines. Participating in the clinical trials but unfortunately despite our preparations, when it came to the crunch and the crunch here is accessing vaccines that would have given us all protection, we were at the bottom of the list,” the President said.

President Kenyatta said it is unfortunate that some countries have more Covid-19 vaccines than they require while others are struggling to access enough doses.

“Now this kind of vaccine nationalism that we have seen. The kind of bias that we have seen of withholding vaccines, where you have countries that today hold 50 vaccines to every citizen, and yet you have countries that are struggling to give their citizens a single dose,” President Kenyatta observed.

On Africa’s response to Covid-19, President Kenyatta said the continent united behind the African Union which ensured all countries had equitable access to resources needed to fight the pandemic.

“When I look at how we as African countries responded (to Covid-19) under the AU (African Union), we were very closely knit in terms of our reactions and actions. How we cooperated in developing and coming up with COVAX to ensure vaccines were going to be available not to one particular country,” he said.