The African Union has formally endorsed Liberia’s candidature for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for the term 2026—2027.
The decision to formally endorse Liberia’s candidature was adopted on July 14, 2023, in Nairobi, Kenya, at the 43rd Ordinary Session of the Executive Council of the African Union, reaffirming the earlier endorsement by the AU Ministerial Committee on Candidatures in 2022.
Her Excellency Ambassador Sarah Safyn Fyneah, Liberia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, represented the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Liberia, H.E. Ambassador Dee-Maxwell Saah Kemayah, Sr., at the Session.
Ambassador Fyneah, on behalf of the Government of Liberia (GOL), applauded the AU decision and attributed the formal endorsement to the farsightedness of Minister Kemayah, who acted with urgency to deliver on His Excellency President George Manneh Weah’s quest to ensure that Liberia is represented on the United Nations Security Council.
Ambassador Fyneah said, “The endorsement was a clean slate, thanks to the farsightedness of Minister Kemayah. The Government of Liberia (GOL) requested early consideration of its candidature and further mobilized ECOWAS to endorse Liberia as the only candidate of the West African region. The United Nations Security Council is one of the most powerful organs of the United Nations, and it will be considered a milestone achievement if Liberia is elected as a non-permanent member of the Security Council at the elections that will be held in 2025 in New York.”
Ambassador Fyneah expressed Liberia’s appreciation for the regional support of ECOWAS and the solidarity of the African Union and looks forward to the actualization of their support during the election in 2025.
In a related development, Ambassador Fyneah pledged Liberia’s support to the African Union’s on-going Institutional Reform and called on the African Union to reform its recruitment process, prioritizing candidates from under-represented countries like Liberia to ensure equitable representation.
Liberia currently has less than 5 persons in the junior professional category at the African Union Commission, even though its representation quota was increased from 8 to 19 in 2021, in line with the institutional reform of the AU that started in 2019. “Liberia laments the slow pace of the recruitment process and proposes that a moratorium be placed on the further recruitment of Member States that have exceeded their representation gap cap. This will allow underrepresented countries to benefit from the recruitment process,” Ambassador Fyneah emphasized.
On the issue of the new scale of assessment of member states, which increases the assessed contribution of member states, Liberia proposed that the current scale of assessment be retained due to the prevailing global socio-economic challenges facing member states.
The 43rd Ordinary Session of the Executive Council convened, under the African Union’s theme for the year 2023, “Acceleration of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Implementation”, is in support of implementing the AfCFTA Agreement in a manner that truly benefits the people of the continent and achieves the aspirations and goals of Agenda 2063.
The session will be followed by the 5th Mid-Year Coordination Conference between the African Union and Regional Economic Communities/ Regional Mechanism, which is scheduled to take place on July 16, 2023.
The Liberian delegation to the 43rd Ordinary Session included Jimmy Barchue, Acting Head of Liberia’s Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and the Permanent Mission to the African Union and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), who also played a pivotal role in ensuring Liberia’s endorsement.