Associate Professor of Law, Associate Dean at the Faculty of Law
Prof. Collins Odote
Associate Dean of Faculty of Law, University of Nairobi,Chairman, Council of Legal Education | South Africa
Short Bio:
Prof. Collins Odote is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya with a Doctor of Philosophy in Law from the University of Nairobi. He is an Associate Professor of Law, Associate Dean at the Faculty of Law, and Research Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies in Environmental Law and Policy at the University of Nairobi. He is also an arbitrator, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, and a member of the Law Society of Kenya. Prof. Odote is the Chairman of the Council of Legal Education and the President of the Association of Environmental Law Lecturers in Africa, which focuses on capacity building and knowledge exchange in environmental law across African universities. His research interests include governance, elections, land law, and environmental and natural resource management. Prof. Odote has consulted various government bodies, non-state actors, and international organizations.
Event: SDGs Conference 2024 | Date: Sept 25, 2024 |
SPEECH
Nine years ago today, on the 25 September 2015 when the 17 Sustainable Development Goals were adopted the title of the document was “Transforming Our World”. Therefore, it is important to ask ourselves why the word is transforming at the heart of inclusive governance. I think it is at the forefront of our conversations because the current pace and direction of global governance are not delivering the dividends required. The Pact for the Future notes that sustainable development is impaired. If the UN Charter that was adopted 79 years ago were fully implemented, we would be able to address ensuring peace, upholding human rights, and promoting dignity, justice, and social progress. As we see today, those same challenges that existed decades ago require us to transform how we govern the globe. Establishing peaceful and accountable public institutions requires strengthening and adherence to the rule of law. The Pact for the Future mentions the “rule of law” seven times in the context of the declaration. Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) 16 also underscores that the rule of law is essential to the realization of SDGs. Addressing the gaps in the rule of law concerns many relevant topics ranging from violations that journalists encounter, shrinking space of civil society, protecting religious rights, and many others. However, the reality across the globe is that the principles and quality of institutions that guarantee the rule of law are under threat.
Therefore, we need to ask ourselves what we can do to ensure judicial independence. If one must choose between the three arms of government, I think the most critical one is the judiciary as it focuses on the rights of the minority and the rights of the disadvantaged individuals. Therefore, strengthening judiciaries must form a core component of the work that we do because it is the judiciary members who will ensure that there are checks and balances so that we can avoid living under the pressure of individuals with power. Therefore, my first point is that we need to strengthen judiciaries and the rule of law as part of our process of ensuring the transformation of local governance. The importance of education and empowerment of young people will be my next emphasis.
I would like to suggest that we need to look at education as a tool for empowering youth and engaging them in public institutions at the national level. The 79th Session of the UN General Assembly has been celebrated for spotlighting youth and global governance. However, I think we need to move beyond celebration to integration. We need to integrate young people into a global government, not just celebrating young individuals. It is only through young advocates that we would be able to achieve the first mention of intergenerational equity in the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development adopted by Brazil. We need to ensure that young people are given agency so that they can be meaningfully involved. In Kenya, in June this year, we had a demonstration by Generation Z that shows that the conversation we had about the youth ballot must stop being a conversation, but we must act on it.
The first action we must take is to invest in public education institutions critically to achieve SDG #4, the quality of education. We should also take into account the content and the cost of education. Next, we need to ensure that there are linkages between educational institutions and global governance so that young people can be able to participate in these platforms at a younger age. So that the gentleman that I met from Bosnia can experience what it means to work at the United Nations (UN) in Nairobi. The ladies from Nairobi should also access opportunities to work at the UN headquarters so that we can have a new set of global citizens who reimagine global governance from their perspectives. That is the only way that we can be able to strengthen global governance.
My last point is that sustainable development is about thriving economies, society, and the environment. I think many of the conflicts that we face are about how it relates to the environment, and I would like to make a case that we need to finance environmental protection institutions. UNEP’s 2021 Report on Making Peace with Nature makes the point that our relationship with nature is one of extraction. We see nature as an object and a consequence. I think we need to change that relationship. We need to see nature as one of the entities that also has rights, but also, we need to put more effort into funding public institutions working on capacity building for environmental protection. As the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in the last Conference of Parties (COP) that took place in Africa in 2022, we are in a fight for our lives, and we are losing it. As I conclude my remarks, I think we need to ensure that to change global governance institutions, we must recognize that we must act both at the global and national levels. We must also prioritize local actions because it is only through strengthening public institutions at the national level that will deliver true dividends to the people and will make global governments inclusive and realistic for the 21st century.