Botswana and the Multilateral Foreign Policy

Abstract

Botswana’s 50th independence anniversary (30 September 2016), offered an opportunity to reflect on the
country’s achievements using multilateral diplomacy or multilateralism as a foreign policy tool, and the
future relevance of that particular approach in promoting the country’s national interest abroad. Evans and
Newnham (1998) describe multilateralism as ‘a system of coordinating relations between two or more states
in accordance with certain principles of conduct... to realise objectives in a particular issue area’. Simply
put, multilateralism refers to the voluntary involvement of more than two countries in addressing common
challenges for mutual benefit based on agreed rules, usually under a specific institutional/organisational
arrangement.