Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Monica Juma addresses the media
outside her office on May 21, 2019. PHOTO | FRANCIS NDERITU | NATION
MEDIA GROUP
Kenya and Somalia's maritime boundary case
is an unfortunate dispute fuelled by “commercial interests” which could
break down security cooperation, Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary
Monica Juma has said.
In
London on Thursday, Dr Juma said foreign entities interested in oil and
natural gas are taking advantage of Somalia’s weaknesses, a
circumstance she warned could force the region off focus in the fight
against terror and sea piracy.
Kenya
has had troops in Somalia since October 2011 and is now part of the
African Union Mission in Somalia that is fighting terror group
Al-Shabaab.
Last week, it was
elected chair of the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia,
an ad hoc group of countries sanctioned by the UN Security Council in
cooperating against piracy.
NO CEDING
But Somalia and Kenya, which belong to the group, are also fighting over maritime boundary.
The top Kenyan diplomat told a
gathering of defence policy experts that the dispute, now the subject of
a case at the International Court of Justice, has been influenced by
foreign commercial bodies she didn’t name.
“This
issue, we believe, is the surest demonstration of the effects of
commercial interests in the context of a fragile country,” Dr Juma said
during a lecture at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
“We
have been witness to an unprecedented provocation including an attempt
by a commercial entity engaging in an activity that amounts to redrawing
international maritime boundaries. While we have remained restrained in
our reaction, we have firmly demanded the retracting of those maps by
Somalia and explanation of their intention.”
She
added, “The bottom line is this: we will deploy all necessary measures
to adhere to our sworn constitutional imperative and duty to protect the
territorial integrity and the sovereignty of the republic: we will
cede, not an inch of our territory.”
PROTESTS
Somalia
sued Kenya at the ICJ, demanding to redraw the current sea boundary so
that it runs diagonal, extending from the land border, as opposed to
eastwards south of Kiunga.
The hearing is set for September 9, according to a schedule released early this week by the ICJ.
The
problem though, Nairobi argues, is that some entities have been
prospecting oil and gas in the very area contested by both sides.
Two weeks ago, Kenya protested to Norway after one of its firm, DNO, used contested maps to determine the oil stock.
Another
Norwegian consulting firm, Spectrum Geo, caused a stir after Mogadishu
used its data from the area to market its oil stock to investors.
Despite the protests, both Mogadishu and Spectrum deny trespassing.
POLITICAL SOLUTION
Dr
Juma’s speech at the RUSI, a think-tank on defence issues, signals
another bid by Nairobi to have a political, rather than courtroom
solution for the dispute.
In
Nairobi, senior diplomats argued RUSI audience meant she could reach
key UK policy influencers to get Kenya’s stance on the dispute.
In
meetings with UK government and business leaders, Dr Juma had argued
that the decision of a court sitting in the Hague, and whose
jurisdiction Kenya had contested, was unlikely to help with a final word
on a matter she thinks raises political questions.
“It
would be very unwise to let commercial interests – Western commercial
interests, at that – delay the settlement of the dispute by entering
agreements with either party. We hope that you can work with us to make
this perfectly clear to these interests,” she later said at RUSI.
POLITICAL RISKS
In
London to attend the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, which
examines violations of democratic principles, Dr Juma’s lecture was on
“Emerging security in Eastern Africa, from piracy to maritime security:
tracing opportunities and risks.”
Here,
she told the audience that the commercial interests in Somalia could
jeopardise revival efforts even inside Somalia itself, as foreign bodies
target specific units of the government to destabilise it.
“On
the ground, the rivalry and posturing in this region is generating
political risks. In Somalia, two opposed alliances have emerged and are
translating into a political environment that is creating opportunities
for negative forces," she said.
“Each
of the two broad alliances is assumed to support either the central or
federal units of the Somalia government. This has caused political
fracture and diminished the imperative for cooperation, the most
poignant effect being that of emboldening Al-Shabaab.”
She
didn’t name the entities, but Somalia’s federal states have recently
bickered with the central government in Mogadishu over whether to
independently sign port development deals with foreign firms.
COMPETING INTERESTS
In 2018, Mogadishu ‘cancelled’ a deal Puntland had entered with Dubai firm DP World, saying it violated territorial integrity.
The
Somali Parliament subsequently said it had banned DP World from doing
business on its soil, nullifying 30-year concession deals for managing
Bossaso port in Puntland and Berbera in Somaliland.
The problem though is that Somalia still uses an interim constitution
and there is little clarity on what federal states can or cannot do in
foreign engagements.
While these controversies involved ports, the discovery of oil in the seas has also fuelled frequent wrangles.
Kenya
believes these competing interests are and the spill-over effects of
the Gulf crisis, “have left Somalia politically and economically
fragile".
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