Country
Iraq
Four briefings tracking one election, one assassination attempt, and a decades-old file of Kuwaiti nationals still missing since the Gulf War.
Iraq's UN Security Council file in this period runs on a briefing cycle for the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), a political mission whose mandate, first established in 2003 and substantially expanded in 2007, has been renewed repeatedly ever since. Kenya's four statements across 2021 and 2022 track a single arc: preparations for, then delivery of, and then a contested aftermath from, Iraq's October 2021 parliamentary elections, run against a backdrop of continuing ISIL/Daesh attacks years after the group's 2017 territorial defeat.
Every statement in this file returns to the same throughline: Iraq's sovereignty and territorial integrity should not be treated as an arena for other states or non-state actors "to settle scores." Kenya condemns specific attacks by name across the file, a January 2021 Baghdad bombing, and the November 2021 assassination attempt on Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, while also tracking a much longer-running humanitarian file inherited from the 1990-91 Gulf War: the search for missing Kuwaiti nationals and property, on which Kenya's statements note incremental progress in each successive briefing.
By May 2022, Kenya's A3 statement (delivered jointly with Gabon and Ghana) had folded in a newer concern absent from the 2021 statements entirely: a May 2022 sandstorm that killed one person and hospitalized thousands, and a reported halving of Iraq's water reserves since 2021, the climate-security nexus Kenya was co-chairing at the Council that same year, arriving in this file too.
Independent Sources for This Introduction
Contemporary Reporting
Chronology
| 2007-08-14 | event | Security Council establishes UNAMI's expanded mandate The Security Council adopts resolution 1770, substantially expanding the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq's mandate (first established in 2003) to support political dialogue, electoral processes, and humanitarian coordination, the mandate Kenya's own 2021-2022 statements track through its periodic renewals. |
| 2021-02-16 | Statement | UNAMI (Iraq): Statement During Meeting Kenya's national statement, delivered by Amb. Martin Kimani, Permanent Representative |
| 2021-05-11 | Statement | UNAMI (Iraq): Statement During Briefing Kenya's national statement, delivered by Amb. Martin Kimani, Permanent Representative |
| 2021-10-10 | event | Iraq holds parliamentary elections Iraq holds early parliamentary elections, called forward from their original 2022 date in response to the 2019-2020 protest movement. Women win parliamentary seats above the constitutional quota; the results are contested by several parties aligned with Iran-backed militias, setting off a prolonged government-formation crisis. |
| 2021-11-23 | Statement | UNAMI (Iraq): Statement During Briefing Kenya's national statement, delivered by Amb. Martin Kimani, Permanent Representative |
| 2022-05-17 | Statement | Iraq/UNAMI: A3 Joint Statement A3 joint statement (Kenya, Gabon, Ghana), delivered by Amb. Michel Xavier Biang, Permanent Representative of Gabon |