While this year’s United Nations General Assembly convened under the theme, “Galvanizing multilateral efforts for poverty eradication, quality education, climate action and inclusion,” the forum will be unable to achieve a true international effort to tackle these challenges — not due to a lack of commitment, but rather to a failure of inclusion.

My nation, the Republic of Somaliland, will not be attending, despite having achieved independence with many other African nations in 1960. Today, we are among the few democratic, secure and economically stable countries on the continent. Having joined an ill-fated union with the former Italian Somalia, and then surviving and separating from an oppressive regime in 1991, the people of Somaliland built a nation that today meets all the requirements for international recognition. Yet we remain sidelined as U.N. member states address key issues of the day that we too face more acutely than many others.