Tuesday, July 31, 2012

A CALL FOR HUMANITY!!


Excellencies, we, each year, find time to meet here for one course- to better our world and to renew our commitments to each other.

The challenges of the yester years can not now be solved by the same solution we identified in our last general assembly. New trends and new dimensions of the same or similar challenge emerge with each passing day. Yet the resilience and the undying hope that we can defeat all, and triumph above all together stands out clear.
Excellencies, it is the realization that by remodeling ourselves, our interests and our mindsets with each changing global trend and each emerging challenge that has seen us come up with new solutions and identify better approach to global problems.

At the core of its interests, each nation has its citizens and civilians at heart and since Humanity has always looked onto each other for progress and this gives rise to the interconnectedness of the international system, the practice of two neighbors, one asking salt from the other replicated in the growth of international aid and donor grants, the same culture of conflict between two individuals that leads individuals arming themselves with clubs and machetes to international arms race and military alliances to counter alliances. From the practice of two or three individuals formulating rules, norms and ethos to guide their daily interactions and their existence in the society, man has developed international law at the global level. Humanity is at the heart of our global interconnectedness but for far too long individuals have played minimal and subordinate role in driving their course at the international system, but in our current system, we have a paradigm shift with individuals playing greater role in bringing states together. The use of technology and the social media through which an American citizen is driven by the plight of the children of Uganda is not just any random act of activism, It’s the realization by individuals that they are now living in one village, the global village and that one can not shut his eyes and plug his ears to the pain and cries of others.

You all realize that it is the individual who is the perpetrator and at the same time the victim of his decisions. Piracy and civil wars, floods, terrorism, economic depression, the ravages of drought and famine directly affect the individual. When a state is food insecure, then it is its civilians that sleep hungry. Whether its child slavery, child soldiers in Uganda and Sudan or the sex exploitation of the kids in Cambodia and Korea. Be it war in Syria or Congo. Floods in the Mississippi or in Kenya, food insecurity in Afghanistan or the horn of Africa, the inaction of member states is not just a failure of these respective governments but rather a common failure of each state of the earth.

The same fear that is borne by the mother in Africa concerning her child’s security, health, environment, education and employment are the same one that others mothers across the world bear, the same concern of dealing with terrorism, piracy and all other challenges to the existence of humanity are being addressed by all international organizations and every state.

How then can we, member states, with shared vision, a common concern for humanity, same challenges then work together to achieve this? It must be a different approach and a new global outlook that must be employed to take us there. Not the traditional and conventional approaches that we have been employing for all these years; we have a collective responsibility in these new era of global interdependence. 

Since we have common problems, common dreams and common goals then, why do we consider others as our enemies and others as our friends? Everyone is working towards the same goal of bettering their position on earth but the means of approach is quite different, that’s where the collision in our quest to better humanity lies,  that’s where the United Nation steps in as the ‘center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these goals’. But often instead of listening to those not our compatriots we oppose, condemn and criticize them without realizing that we indeed are working towards the same goal but in different perspectives. All we sometimes need is tolerance and dialogue and if the stand of our enemies is indeed the destruction of humanity then we are have a right to destroy them before they destroy the global good and humanity. Diplomatic envoys and global leaders who we can call Global Village Elders have been listened to, our won Former Secretary General MR. Anan is one such global elder whose service we can all rely on to settle our differences than resorting to unwarranted force in dealing with such enemies.

The United Nation has the mandate to protect civilians, embodies the ideal of collective responsibility and today unilateral actions is not accepted, I ask you all to uphold the principle of RESPONSBLE SOVEREINTY and to have a global vision in which each member state respects the rights of individuals and instead of defining their interests in terms of power, define your interest in terms of a common course for humanity and the call to humanity entails that it is individuals who tackle the existing global problems in their own unique way. States need to tap in a more positive way into the individual debates going on, in the village squares, the campus hostels and in the market centers in the same importance as those in prominent board rooms.

I urge you, political leaders and developed countries, to go farther than forging new partnerships that ends at economic, military or political fronts to that ensuring that the benefits of such partnerships will spill over to friendship between individuals. We need to go farther than give aid and threatening to cut donor funds and instead put some face to the statistics that is prompting you to five those funds. Engage at a more friendly and humane level the human beings benefiting form these external aid other than stopping at the aid agencies when it comes to our interactions.Environmental conservation concepts brought down to the household level where each family is asked to plant trees and utilize resources too.

When upholding the rule of law, I ask all of you, to dispense justice to all and not selective justice, we need to go farther than persecuting a few perpetrators at the ICC to leaving the true victims in the same state and worsened conditions of life as resulting from the actions.

When we refuse to learn from the apartheid in South Africa and now having to deal with a similar crisis in Sudan, where the north is ejecting the southerners who have all along known the north to be their home!
The case of Rwandan genocide being a dent on the story of global interdependence and today we face a situation where each year crisis that if added together can be of a similar magnitude as the Rwandan genocide and the horn of Africa crisis being a constant problem where each year we deal with the same scenario of hunger and starvation. We can’t talk of sustainability if our approach every year is short-term and immediate only to the crisis. This kind of repetitative crisis should awaken us to stand together now more than ever.

This not a time for war drills and arms race, not a time to form alliances and counter alliances, the debate of Africa leaning towards the East should and must be subservient to the problems facing us all, the Syrian crisis, the hunger in the horn of Africa, terrorism, floods and a diminishing resource base. The interests of single states should be subordinate to the cause of humanity. Its not a time for shutting our ears to the debates going on between citizens of our different states on the social media, not undermining global concerns and agendas even when it is in conflict with our immediate interests but this is a time for identifying the means of and facilitating platform and forging partnership. A time for being true to each other and not to renegade on the agreements between us, not clasping our hands into a fist to those we consider not to be our compatriots or cutting the hands that are stretched out to us. This is the time for shaping one global destiny. And the way is to empower our citizens to know that they are living in one world and to respect life.

If nations remain indifferent to the crisis of the other, they lack in the same breath the moral authority to address each other and to condemn each other’s indiscretion and failures. We need to forge a new global moral where all is looked at from the angle of Humanity and your roles as political leaders is to give directions, identify new, overlooked approach, creativity and nurture the ingenuity of our race!!

I wrote this as a competition entry following The Brookings Institution and the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) speech writing contests for university students. The Brookings Institution in Washington DC and UNAI launched the global contest, inviting the students around the world to imagine a speech that would be made by the Secretary-General at the opening of the next session of the General Assembly. The contest aimed to encourage interested students and future leaders with the opportunity to demonstrate innovative thinking on responsibilities and rights involved in solving global problems together in a shared culture of intellectual social responsibility.

And I leave you with this excerpt from the song  ‘’Is There For HonestPoverty", by Robert Burns

Then let us pray that come it may
(As come it will for a' that)
That Sense and Worth over all the earth
Shall have the first place and all that!
For all that, and all that,
It is coming yet for all that,
That man to man the world over
Shall brothers be for all that.

Monday, July 30, 2012

OIL REVENUE IN EAST AFRICA


On the third of July, 2012 I was in Africacounts round table forum at Hilton hotel, Nairobi organized by Development initiatives to discuss

          Natural resources in Eastern Africa: what do they mean for poverty eradication?

Activists, politicians, journalists and development enthusiasts were present. In roads were made on the concept of the emerging oil revenue and the implications on the public expenditure. This forum is a bold one and more of this is needed.

From the round table forum it evidently struck me that many don’t really know what the oil sector is all about, and despite learning a lot I still have a lot of other questions in mind. But before I delve into these questions, let’s briefly look at some of the areas of major concern with regard to the oil sector and with regard to oil revenue in Africa.

When the discovery of oil in Kenya was announced by the Ministry of Energy in Kenya, the social media was awash with discussions, expectations were stated in the most exaggerated of ways. Many saw Kenya leap frog to vision 2030 and beyond in just about a few years. My friend saw his dream of owning a car come into existence…

              "the price of oil will be so cheap, I will buy me a big car in just a few years’’

The other one majoring in education was of the opinion that the employment created by the oil industry will save him from the many years of ‘’tarmacking’’ that many Kenyan graduates are forced to undergo with the rising unemployment. How mistaken he is. During the forum a participant mentioned that
   
        ‘’only 28,000 people are employed in the oil sector in South Arabia which has the world’s second largest proven oilreserves’’

Just after a few months the whole oil euphoria died down, no more heated debates, no more insightful discussions on the same in the social media. The journalists too did not have many things to say or report on the oil issue apart from the occasional directives from the drilling companies…
‘’more oil wells to be sunk’’, ‘’ Kenya discovers gas’’, 

Because of the technicalities shrouding the oil sector analytical discussions on the implications of the resource generated by the Oil industry do not feature much on our media houses. The Kenyan journalists are mum on giving very vital details to the citizenry...these trends are not only confined to Kenya but the whole of East African region.

Jeff Koinange was in Lokichar just a few weeks ago in his ‘’ face the nation” programme and I heard the residents complain that they are yet to get any kind of employment from the oil drills, how their environment was being mutilated, how their livelihoods was being disrupted because the oil fields were their grazing lands.

can the oil sector be a solution to unemployment for many?
Only development think tanks realize how important that the clearing of the misconceptions on the oil sector and initiating very lively debates is.

Some pertinent issues that we should be tackling as a nation concerning this sector?
  • Managing the high, inaccurate and exaggerated expectations.
  • Enhancing Stakeholder participation
  • How do we ensure that the non-oil sectors do not succumb to the excesses realized from the oil revenue?
  • Taxation and fiscal management.
  •  Legal framework
  • Land, environment and conflict prevention.
  • Oil revenue distribution and sharing.
The oil sector is one shrouded with a lot of technicalities, issues such as
·         how oil prices are set
·         how revenue is generated and shared
·         How contracts are awarded is beyond the understanding of many.
We all realize the primacy of engaging the local communities in drawing partnerships and making all such partnership local community inclusive will prevent future conflicts on these resources. How can this happen if they don’t have understanding of all such factors?  
The government, think tanks and media houses should enhance how it engages the various stakeholders in this sector by:
·         Clearing the fog covering this sector
·         Encouraging more open discussions in the local communities
·         Avoid the spread of ill-conceived ideas to mislead people and raise their expectations so high.
·         Making revenue data and all information concerning the sector open to the public.
Development initiative who organized the forum came up with a four point policy message to East Africa on the discovery of oil and gas recommendation (download the pdfversion of this policy message here)
This is the first of other blog posts that I will be posting on the Oil and Gas discovery in the East African region seeking to tackle questions such as these;- 
  • EAC member states have high foreign debt and might easily be forced to take up the settlement of such debts (following the oil revenue) - how best can EAC governments and states position themselves to ward off unfavorable conditions from the major powers with regard to oil?
  • The finite oil resource is often addressed by setting up a savings fund-where a share of annual oil revenue is saved for future generations- Uganda already has policy recommendations to put aside some of the Oil wealth for future generations- is this the way to go for EAC member states?
  • How can EAC members better protect their non-Oil sector and How to best manage other revenue sources?
  • What best model of revenue sharing should EAC states pursue when dealing with the highly uncertain and volatile oil prices?  
  • What lessons can EAC states draw from other Oil producing stateS?
I urge each one of us to take up the debate at our own levels and try to get a grip of the implications of the revenue generated from the oil sector, the environmental impact of the sector, do not take a relegated position… this issues will eventually catch up with you if things go wrong in the way the oil sector is handled. When god-forbid the ‘’oil curse” comes into being, you wont be spared.