News Investigators/ The Ghanian President, John Mahama, on Thursday called for a permanent seat for Africa in the UN Security Council saying this would demonstrate equality and fairness in the UN.
According to him, Security Council reform is not a favour to Africa; it is an imperative for the legitimacy, credibility, and survival of the United Nations.
Mr Mahama, in his address to the world leaders at the ongoing General Debate of the 81st session of the General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York, said the continued exclusion of the continent was unacceptable.
“Africa does not seek charity. Africa seeks equal partnership anchored in mutual respect.
“Africa’s exclusion from permanent membership of the Security Council is fundamentally unacceptable in the 21st century,’’ he said.
The president, therefore, called for permanent representation of Africa with full rights and veto powers.
According to him, belonging anchors Africa and a reminder that the continent is part of a human story.
“When weaponised by political expediency, it transforms into nativism, chauvinism, xenophobia and the dangerous prejudices extended to those who are deemed different.
“No race is superior. No nation is inferior.
“No child’s life is worth less because of the language they speak, the faith they profess, the colour of their skin, or the land of their birth,” he told his audience.
This, he said, should remain the moral foundation of the UN.
He recalled his pledge in 2025 to secure international recognition of the transatlantic trafficking and racialised chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity — a position affirmed by the Assembly in March.
“Some cautioned that we were reopening old wounds,” he said, but “we came to seek healing”.
On conflicts, he warned of “a dangerous drift toward unilateralism, lawlessness, and the erosion of multilateral norms”.
On Gaza, he urged the international community to stop using diplomatic euphemisms to veil the human carnage while reaffirming support for a two-State solution and condemning “all acts of terrorism by Hamas”.
Mahama described climate change as the ultimate test of global equity, urging developed countries to provide predictable and non-debt-creating grants.
NAN
