Citizens of African states are natural partners in the fight to support a rules-based international order that curbs authoritarian regimes’ excesses.
By Michelle Gavin, Guest Columnist and Blogger
As the world’s attention is riveted by the dramatic and consequential struggle for Ukraine, last week it was a voice from Africa—that of Kenyan Ambassador to the United Nations Martin Kimani—who clarified the stakes in Ukraine for the rest of the world. His defense of rules-based multilateralism and rebuke of powerful states that disregard international norms when it suits them pointed toward the promise of a renewed commitment to international order. It also underscored the role that Africa, which soon will account for a quarter of the world’s population, will play in shaping it.
For U.S. policymakers, the current global inflection point should help prompt the long-overdue shift from imagining that African states are simply the sites of crises with little relevance to the rest of the world to understanding that there will be no successful attempt to reform the international, rules-based order without Africa. But these states must be partners, not afterthoughts. That means that reforms should address African priorities, from ending energy poverty to more equitable pandemic responses to rules for global migration that better reflect where labor forces are growing and where they are shrinking.
The search for lasting global solidarity also requires acknowledging and reckoning with the racism that distorts analysis, obscures opportunities, and fuels injustice. That racism informs the kind of choices that leave Africans stuck at border crossings as they struggle to escape Ukraine. It underpins the notion that it shocks the conscience to see coverage of exhausted Ukrainian families fleeing their homes, but in other parts of the world, the sudden and gut-wrenching transformation of families into refugees is business as usual. It is a poison that will continue to sicken the already ailing international system. States that wish to build a resilient international order ignore it at their peril.
This publication is part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy.
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