Kenya upends diplomatic tradition in quest for efficiency
Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Alfred Mutua speaks during the EU-Kenya Business Forum at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Nairobi on February 21, 2023.
The government says it will this week explain, further, the reasons behind the move to take away coordination duties of the Foreign Ministry in engaging diplomats and handing them to the Deputy President.
But even before the reasons come in, experts including serving and former diplomats have warned the country could dismantle a practice that ensures the right and left hands of the government worked in harmony.
A note verbale issued last week to the foreign embassies indicated Deputy President Gachagua will handle meetings where embassies want to engage more than one government department at once.
Old tradition
“Requests of meetings of cross-cutting nature and that which involve more than one ministry, it is advised that such requests should be made through the office of the deputy president for coordination purposes,” the letter shared with all foreign missions accredited to Nairobi indicated.
The move upends an old tradition in which the Foreign Ministry has been central to coordinating engagements and based on the Vienna Conventions of 1961, and 1963 on diplomatic and consular relations.
Ngovi Kitau, a former Kenyan ambassador to South Korea told The Sunday Nation, the country may be mis-stepping by adopting a way of conducting foreign policy which other countries do not use.
“The problem we have is that policies are not harmonised in our ministries. They need the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to coordinate them because this is the practice globally,” he said.
“Foreign Policy is not based on who is in power. It is based on effort and practice that is guided by the Vienna Convention. You cannot be domestic-centric n foreign affairs. Foreign affairs are guided by the Convention. That is why, for example, if the Saudi Embassy has a national day, they invite the Foreign Ministry. In this changes, who will they invite?
He warned that some countries may decline audience if delegations from other ministries travelled without involvement of the Foreign Ministry.
Foreign policy
Foreign Affairs PS Korir Sing’oei said on Friday the government will explain to “relevant actors on implementing this ministerial directive consistently with the VCDR (Vienna convention on diplomatic relations), Kenya Constitution, Foreign Service Act & the Executive Order of Jan 2023.”
Dr Claire Amuhaya, a lecturer at Rudn University in Moscow, and adjunct lecturer at Riara University says the argument for better coordination is valid, given the more actors involved in foreign policy these days; such as ministries of trade, infrastructure and East African affairs. But she said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“Since the 20th century, diplomacy has experienced notable changes, but the main characteristic is the requirement to synchronise all government ministries and departments to work together with a common goal of achieving foreign policy,” she told the Sunday Nation.
“The solution is to go back to why the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations was enacted. It is the core of diplomatic relations because it creates a level playing field all over the world. For Kenya to try and create its own way of doing things is almost a deviation from international law which can bring challenges,” she argued.
Prof Gilbert Khadiagala, who teaches international relations at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, says the new position could lead to “confusion and incoherence.”
“The new policy will create more actors in foreign policy that potentially lead to confusion and incoherence. We just need a better resourced and staffed foreign affairs ministry, with a competent economic diplomacy division,” Prof Khadiagala told Sunday Nation.
Career diplomats
This week, Kenya’s own diplomats lamented the decision with some indicating it could make the ministry redundant and its career diplomats underworked.
“If the Ministry is inefficient, it should have been instructed to shape up, create a new coordination mechanism and office specifically to do that.
“To ask the Presidency to coordinate foreign affairs roles is to effectively transfer that mandate at the heart of the conduct of Foreign policy. There is no Minister of Foreign Affairs in any other country that has accepted or will ever accept that arrangement,” explained a senior Kenyan diplomat who spoke on the background.
“No other country will allow Kenyan diplomats running amok knocking unofficially on doors of every office they dream about and if they cannot why would it be okay for foreign diplomats to do so in Kenya?”
