Neutrality as a Political Calculation

With Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, conventional interstate warfare returned to Europe. What most people had previously considered absolutely impossible became a reality. The voting panel in the United Nations General Assembly soon came to be the point of reference where support was indicated for either Ukraine or Russia. But it also came to reflect a moral scale between the “right” and the “wrong” side of history. The much emphasised fact that most states in the world are showing solidarity with Ukraine stands in stark contrast to the realisation that the majority of the world’s population is in fact on the side of those states that abstain or that sympathise with Russia.

Since the beginning of the invasion, the international community has addressed its impact and consequences in six UN General Assembly votes, from the very first condemnation of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine through to the most recent vote on a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine in accordance with the UN Charter. Resolutions on the humanitarian consequences of the aggression against Ukraine and on support for the territorial integrity of the country have also been put to the vote. In all these votes, as well as in the two on suspending Russia from the UN Human Rights Council and requiring Russia to pay reparations to Ukraine, which received the most abstentions and votes against them, Uganda abstained. As such, it is the only country in East Africa that cast the same vote in all six ballots.

Kenya in particular, which had a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council until the end of 2022, always voted in favour, apart from abstaining in the vote to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council. As early as 21 February 2022, at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, Kenya’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Martin Kimani, spoke for many Africans when he stressed that Russia’s actions went against the principles of the Charter. Referring to the colonial history of the African continent, he warned against a backward-looking view of history that – combined with a dangerous sense of nostalgia – would result in new forms of domination and oppression. On behalf of Kenya, he rejected irredentism and expansion, regardless of their basis. At the same time, he strongly condemned the willingness of the major powers – among which he counted the members of the Security Council – to breach international law, as observed in the past decades.

Imperial expansion and the resulting disenfranchisement and oppression are all too familiar to the people of the African continent. The colonial experience of their peoples is an integral part of their identity. How, then, can it be explained that a country with a long colonial history – such as Uganda – does not condemn every form of imperialism and colonialism, but instead takes what appears to be a “neutral” stance?