African Nations Raise Real Issues at UN General Assembly Debate

Sept. 22, 2022 (EIRNS)—“The real inflection point will be the world attending fully to the needs of the marginalized and forgotten. Our greatest global challenges are poverty, inequality, joblessness, and feeling excluded,” said South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Dr. Naledi Pandor, in her address to the UN General Assembly debate. “South Africa, like many other developing countries, faces huge developmental challenges, including in our energy sector,” she said. “We need to globally address global energy shortages.”

In order to achieve development, a new paradigm is needed in the world. She pointed to the need to implement a new mode of collaboration at the UN: “It is unacceptable that 77 years after its establishment, five nations wield disproportionate decision-making power in the United Nations system as a whole. Transformation must include more representative, transparent, and accountable organs of global governance. For the UN to be effective, the General Assembly must be revitalized, the Security Council must be reformed. We also cannot have a credible organization if persistent transgressors of the Charter are not held accountable.”

She singled out one in particular, and it wasn’t Russia: “Israel must be held accountable for its destructive actions that have significantly impaired the possibility of a two-state solution.”

Kenya’s President William Samoei Ruto also called for reforms of the United Nations: “Let me express the strong collective conviction of my country that the relevance, legitimacy, and moral authority of the United Nations will forever remain deficient, undermined by the absence of comprehensive reforms of the United Nations Security Council,” which he said cannot properly execute its mission if it is “undemocratic and unrepresentative.”

Both nations called for an end to sanctions against Zimbabwe and Cuba.

President Felix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo added his voice to Security Council reform, calling for two additional non-permanent seats for Africa, and two (perhaps rotating) permanent seats, with veto privileges.

While European leaders spoke about Ukraine, democracies vs. autocracies, and denigrated the Belt and Road Initiative, many nations of the world want a deliberation structure conducive to and an international order oriented around sovereign development, not the pathetic geopolitical intrigues characteristic of humanity’s infancy. For example, Kenya’s President Ruto stated: “Kenya joins the Secretary General in calling for the strengthening of multilateralism as the only sustainable path to a peaceful, stable and prosperous world for all. This is the imperative of our time, and the call of this moment. It is time to work on the trust deficit with stronger conviction that none of us is really safe until all of us are safe.”