World has so much to hope for as United Nations turns 73

United Nations headquarters in Nairobi. [File, Standard Digital]

Today is the UN Day. UN Day marks the anniversary of the 1945 entry into force of the UN Charter. There is so much to celebrate about the UN as it turns 73 years. Its role in maintaining world peace and its efforts to promote human progress have been quite frankly, commendable. Indeed, the world is a better place because of the UN.

There are fewer wars and conflicts than before and those who breach the peace and violate human rights, for sure, know they won’t get away with it.

Yet a lot still remains to be done.

The current UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is driving some of the boldest reforms of the UN system, no doubt to make it a more effective, efficient, coherent and well co-ordinated outfit.

His tenure promises to be more revolutionary than that of his predecessors, mostly described as evolutionary. He recognizes that since the world is changing, so must the UN.

The countdown to the ambitious SDGs is already on, and the Agenda 2030 timeline implies we should already have gone one-fifth of the way towards achieving all the targets.

These include ridding the world of poverty and generally ensuring that those at the periphery of development are not left behind.

Kenya performed relatively well in the Millennium Development Goals- a campaign hailed for lifting more than one billion people globally out of extreme poverty- and making huge gains against hunger. Nonetheless, Kenya is one of the countries that did not achieve MDG goals 4 and 5, which were about reducing maternal and child mortality.

Though we laud the government’s efforts to address this through the Universal Health Care – one of the Big 4 agenda pillars- it would be an honour to the founders of the UN were these efforts to be consolidated and acted on promptly.