President Uhuru Kenyatta skips UN General Assembly, summons ambassador.

[Dr. Job]

President Uhuru Kenyatta skips UN General Assembly, summons ambassador.


Updated Saturday, September 21st 2013 at 10:15 GMT +3

President Uhuru Kenyatta will not be attending UNGA meeting in New York PHOTO: STANDARD/FILE By Standard Digital Reporter



For the first time since independence Kenya will not be represented at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). A statement from State House Nairobi Friday evening said Kenya’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Machariah Kamau, had informed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon that Kenya would not be at the High Level Week of the Sixty Eighth Session of the United Nations General Assembly.


The statement cited that President Kenyatta could not be out of the country at the same time as the Deputy President William Ruto. The DP is in the Netherlands attending the hearings of a case facing him at the International Criminal Court ( ICC).


A week before the start of Ruto’s case the president had indicated that it would not be possible for both of them to be outside the country at the same time. At thet time the ICC had issued a prelimilary schedule that showed both Kenyatta and Ruto would have been in The Hague at the same time.


The Statehouse statement has also added that both the president and his deputy have so far cooperated fully with the International Criminal Court.


“The Deputy President presented himself to the Hague court of his own free will and has submitted himself to the jurisdiction of the court. Kenya expects the ICC to show the same level of cooperation thus demonstrated with a state party.”


According to the statement, Kenya informed the UN Secretary-General that the political space for continuous cooperation was rapidly being eroded and the country was weary that the dire consequences of these developments seemed to be lost on the ICC interlocutors.


Kenyatta was scheduled to attend the High Level Week of the United Nations General Assembly from 23rd to 27th September 2013.
The President has also summoned the Kenyan Ambassador/Permanent Representative to the UN Macharia Kamau, back to Nairobi for consultation.

 

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NEWS
[h=1]
[/h]By Joint Report The EastAfrican

Posted Saturday, September 21 2013 at 16:16
IN SUMMARY

• However, a statement released by State House said Kenya’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Machariah Kamau, had informed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon that Kenya would not be represented at the General Assembly. This is the first time Kenya will not be represented in its 50 years of independence.
• Attending the General Assembly is a critical matter for a government that is lobbying countries to prevail upon the UN Security Council to stop the trials in The Hague.
• The AU is spearheading a campaign Rwanda and Uganda initiated to pressure the ICC either to drop or transfer to Kenya its cases against President Kenyatta and his deputy Ruto.

The African Union is expected to make its case against The Hague-based International Criminal Court trials of Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, Deputy President William Ruto and journalist Joshua Sang at the 68th UN General Assembly this week.


However, a statement released by State House said Kenya’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Machariah Kamau, had informed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon that Kenya would not be represented at the General Assembly. This is the first time Kenya will not be represented in its 50 years of independence.


“Whereas very important multilateral and bilateral meetings had been planned for President Kenyatta during the week, including a speech to the General Assembly, we very much regret that he cannot be out of the country at the same time as the Deputy President,” Mr Kamau is said to have told Mr Ki-Moon.


President Kenyatta was among heads of states expected at the world leaders’ conference alongside 130 other heads of state.


Attending the General Assembly is a critical matter for a government that is lobbying countries to prevail upon the UN Security Council to stop the trials in The Hague.


Already, Kenya has succeeded in rallying majority of African countries who have ratified the Rome Statute to petition The Hague to stop the trials.




The Assembly opened on Tuesday, September 17, at the UN’s head offices in New York, but the general debate, which is its centrepiece, is set for Tuesday, September 24 to Friday, October 4.


According to sources at the UN, Hailemariam Desalegn, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia and current chair of the African Union, has been lined up to speak. The EastAfrican could not readily establish the exact date when he will take to the Assembly’s lectern.


There is no specific prior understanding that Mr Hailemariam will make the case against the ICC, but he has already notified UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon about African states’ disapproval of the Court’s move against the Kenyan leaders and how they could reconsider their participation in international activities should their demands not be met.


“He may raise it, but I don’t know for sure. It is up to him to choose what to emphasise when he speaks,” James Mugume, Permanent Secretary in Uganda’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told The EastAfrican.


The AU is spearheading a campaign Rwanda and Uganda initiated to pressure the ICC either to drop or transfer to Kenya its cases against President Kenyatta and his deputy Ruto.




The latter’s trial opened two weeks ago. He, along with journalist Joshua Sang, pleaded “not guilty” to charges of murder, deportation or forcible transfer of population and persecution. The charges arise out of the 2007/8 post-election violence that killed some 1,133 people and displaced 650,000 others.


The reality of a sitting African leader appearing before judges at the ICC appears to have rattled many heads of state and government across the continent and has given momentum to the renewed effort to either kill the prosecution in The Hague, or hand it over to local courts in Kenya or take it somewhere in Africa.


At the UN, the AU is expected to argue that the trial of Kenyatta and Ruto undermines governance in Kenya; downplays efforts that have already been invested in resettling people whom the violence displaced; makes a mockery of the country’s new Constitution that has received international acclaim; and has a regressive effect of reopening, not healing, old wounds.


The African Union will on October 13 hold an extraordinary Heads of State Summit at which a decision on Africa’s relationship with the ICC will be made.


The African leaders are threatening to lead their countries in a mass withdrawal from the Rome Statute under which the ICC is constituted if their demands are not met.


The AU had on September 10 written to the ICC — copying the United Nations Security Council — asking that the cases be stopped pending the determination of the request.


The ICC Presidency on Friday said it has no legal powers to consider arguments and concerns over the Kenyan cases before the ICC. The Second Vice-President of the ICC Judge Cuno Tarfusser said such matters should be referred to the relevant Chambers — Trial Chamber V (a) — in accordance with the Rome Statute and the ICC’s Rules of Procedure and Evidence.



The AU is also pushing to ensure the two are not forced to attend all the sessions of their trial to concentrate on their official duties.


Opinion, however, is sharply divided over the real import of this campaign. There are as many people who see it as useful in pushing back against a Court they accuse of deviating from its founding purposes as those who think it is an exercise in futility and an unnecessary faltering on the continent’s international commitments.


“The demands are unreasonable. Kenya is not on trial and besides Kenyatta and Ruto were indicted before they won the elections. The Security Council, if they succeed, can only postpone it for a year and then review again. They cannot force the ICC to drop the cases,” Harrold Acemah, a retired career diplomat who worked at Uganda’s Mission at the UN, told The EastAfrican.


The ICC has been criticised for selective prosecution (all the cases before it are from Africa even though four of them were referred to it by African states), not being as independent as it likes to make out since it is politically accountable to the UN Security Council, and for taking on essentially political cases that are beyond its purview.


“We need to distinguish criminal violence from political violence. Unlike criminal violence, political violence is primarily issue-driven; also, political violence has an audience, a constituency. This is why political violence often turns into a cycle of violence, outlasting the initiative of one set of perpetrators,” eminent scholar Mahmood Mamdani told The EastAfrican in an interview last year.


Viewed against the dominant economic narrative that Africa is on the rise, the anti-ICC campaign is a test as to whether the continent can assert itself on the international stage.


Earlier this year, Kenya made concerted efforts to persuade members of the UN Security Council to terminate the ICC cases against Kenyatta and Ruto. But most of the 15 nations represented on the Council did not support Kenya’s position.


American authorities have threatened to arrest Sudan President Omar al Bashir if he travels to New York after the ICC asked the authorities there to arrest him.
Mr Bashir has two arrest warrants on his head over human rights violations in his country.


However Mr Kenyatta is not under travel caveat as no warrant has been issued against him or his deputy in view of the charges facing them.


Earlier, President Kenyatta had been scheduled to deliver his maiden speech to the UN General Assembly on September 25. He was also expected to hold a series of bilateral talks while in New York.


The annual high-level debate taking place this week is intended to establish a framework for global development initiatives following the conclusion in 2015 of the 15-year effort to sharply reduce poverty rates in Africa and other poor regions of the world.



Substantial progress toward meeting this and other Millennium Development Goals has occurred in some countries. Rwanda and Uganda, for example, have significantly improved living standards for their citizens, according to monitoring reports, while Kenya is placed in a group of 14 poor countries worldwide that have made the least progress in alleviating extreme poverty.


UN General Assembly President John Ashe emphasised at a press conference last week that much remains to be done in the years following 2015.


“With some 1.4 billion people without reliable electricity; 900 million lacking access to clean water and 2.6 billion without adequate sanitation, action is urgently needed to address these persistent challenges,” he said.


But even as the Millennium Goals deadline approaches, rich countries are reducing their development assistance, noted a UN report issued last week.


The timing of this erosion of support for poor countries “could not have been worse,” Olav Kjorven, a UN assistant secretary-general, said at a press conference launching the report titled, “The Global Partnership for Development: The Challenge We Face.”


Aid to Uganda fell 14 per cent during the same period to $1.5 billion. Tanzania, which took in nearly the same amount of development aid as Kenya, was also among the countries experiencing a decline as its bilateral aid receipts fell 22 per cent.


The Democratic Republic of Congo ranks as the single-biggest aid recipient in black Africa, with its sum of $5.2 billion having jumped 44 per cent in the most recent year for which comparative statistics are available.





By GAAKI KIGAMBO and KEVIN KELLEY

 

[R.B]

By Standard Digital Reporter

For the first time since independence Kenya will not be represented at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). A statement from State House Nairobi Friday evening said Kenya's Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Machariah Kamau, had informed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon that Kenya would not be at the High Level Week of the Sixty Eighth Session of the United Nations General Assembly.

The statement cited that President Kenyatta could not be out of the country at the same time as the Deputy President William Ruto. The DP is in the Netherlands attending the hearings of a case facing him at the International Criminal Court ( ICC).

A week before the start of Ruto's case the president had indicated that it would not be possible for both of them to be outside the country at the same time. At thet time the ICC had issued a prelimilary schedule that showed both Kenyatta and Ruto would have been in The Hague at the same time.

The Statehouse statement has also added that both the president and his deputy have so far cooperated fully with the International Criminal Court.

"The Deputy President presented himself to the Hague court of his own free will and has submitted himself to the jurisdiction of the court. Kenya expects the ICC to show the same level of cooperation thus demonstrated with a state party."

According to the statement, Kenya informed the UN Secretary-General that the political space for continuous cooperation was rapidly being eroded and the country was weary that the dire consequences of these developments seemed to be lost on the ICC interlocutors.

Kenyatta was scheduled to attend the High Level Week of the United Nations General Assembly from 23rd to 27th September 2013.

The President has also summoned the Kenyan Ambassador/Permanent Representative to the UN Macharia Kamau, back to Nairobi for consultation.