Amina Mohamed, Kenya’s Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary, has called on the United Nations (UN), the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and other international institutions to reform themselves, Kenya’s Daily Nation reported on Friday.

Mohamed told the Athens Democracy Forum in Greece that if these organisations wanted to operate effectively they had to improve their legitimacy, accountability and effectiveness.

She added that these reforms could help reverse the trend in which international solidarity has been overtaken by national interests, creating a recipe for chaos and conflict.

The importance of international institutions to global peace, order and development was highlighted by Mohamed.

“Many of the challenges we face today – from climate change, migration and terrorism, to trade and health – are global in nature and can only be effectively tackled within the framework of international institutions of cooperation,” said Mohamed.

One of the reasons behind opposition to institutions of global governance was their rigidity and failure to adjust to the changing global landscape, she opined.

“To be relevant in the 21st century, the WTO must adjust to the modern economic environment which is today vastly different from what obtained when the WTO was established in 1995,” she said.