Wednesday June 17, 2020
Kenya will wait another day to see if it can capture the seat to be non-permanent member of the United Nations at UN-Security Council.
This is after it garnered 113 votes beating its rival Djibouti in Wednesday's voting.
Djibouti, which launched charm offensive campaign against Kenya’s candidature, got 78 votes.
The Kenyan votes were however less than the 128 required to win the seat.
Kenya and Djibouti are seeking to replace South Africa for 2021-22. It needed the support of two-thirds of UN members (129 votes) of the 193 states to win the seat.
If Kenyan wins the Thursday vote, it will be the third time, the East African nation will be serving at the UN’s top organ.
India won unopposed as the Asia-Pacific representative.
Turkey won the Presidency of the General Assembly.
The UN’s Security Council has the primary responsibility of maintaining international peace and security.
It enjoys robust powers including the imposition of sanctions and authorisation of military action when international peace is threatened.
Only five UN member states – the US, UK, Russia, China and France – have permanent seats.
They are known as the P5 while the other 188 member states can be elected to non-renewable two-year terms.
Only 10 member states can fill those non-permanent slots at a time meaning at any one time, there are 15 member states sitting on the Council.
While the Council’s decisions are taken by a qualified majority, requiring support from nine of its fifteen members, only the P5 can individually exercise a veto to block a decision.
For the two vacant seats from among the African and Asia-Pacific States, three candidates had been communicated, namely, Djibouti, India and Kenya. Of those three candidates, India and Kenya were endorsed candidates.
Kenya has served twice previously as a member of the Council in 1973-74 and 1997-98.
In the 1972 election, Australia, Austria, Indonesia, Kenya, and Peru were elected as the five new non-permanent members of the UN Security Council for two-year mandates commencing on 1 January 1973.
This was the first time Kenya, Austria and Indonesia made it to the council for the first time.
Then, the General Assembly had a membership of 132 member states
Voting was conducted on a single ballot with Kenya garnering 112 votes in the first round.
The 1996 election was held on 21 October during the 51st session of the United Nations General Assembly.
Kenya, Costa Rica, Japan, Portugual and Sweden were elected by the General Assembly as non-permanent members of the UN Security Council for two-year terms commencing on 1 January 1997.
A total of eight candidates vied for the five seats.
Only the single seat for the African Group was uncontested thus Kenya was the only candidate.
Voting proceeded by secret ballot and Kenya garnered 172 votes out of the minimum required of 112 in the first round.
There were 181 ballots in each of the elections.