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{
    "id": 101855,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/101855/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 343,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Ms. Odhiambo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 119,
        "legal_name": "Alfred Bwire Odhiambo",
        "slug": "alfred-bwire"
    },
    "content": "exploitation of child labour. We also have child sex tourism as I had indicated before. We also have a growing concern on issues of illegal adoption. About a year ago, there was a case that was tried in one of the courts in the UK which involved a child who had been moved and taken out of Kenya illegally and had been adopted illegally. The challenge is that sometimes people may be desperate to have children and may not harm them. But when you have those kinds of leeway then you might have situations where children are removed out of the country and eventually their organs are removed. Some of the causes of trafficking in persons include poverty, especially in Kenya and then the lie that we frequently refer to as “the better life syndrome”. This is where most of our poor and desperate young people are told that if they go out of the country, there are prospects of better life. However, when they go out they discover that, indeed, there is no better life. They instead do jobs that are generally called the 3Ds – Dirty, Dangerous and Degrading jobs that residents of those countries cannot do themselves. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, one of the other reasons that causes trafficking in Kenya is our porous borders, our weak legal framework, wars and internal armed conflicts especially following the 2007 conflict, we had a lot of cases reported to the organizations that I worked with which involved trafficking in persons. Whenever we have calamities like the one we witnessed in Haiti then suddenly you see many people who may come pretending that they want to assist but they use our children and take them out for purposes of trafficking. Another challenge that we face as a country is flawed birth registration system. I want to say that many people have been misinforming the public that, especially, Article 14 of the proposed new Constitution, will be used to allow children especially from Somali to be taken to Kenya because it provides that any child below the age of eight years will be presumed Kenyan. The persons who suggested that clause are persons like me who work with children’s organizations and have seen the way our flawed birth registration systems have been detrimental to our own children. Some have been stuck in institutions for years because we cannot document them as a country. Some then become targets of crooks who then use fake systems like the case I was reporting about in the UK, where a child was taken away using fake birth certificates. That child had at three instances a Kikuyu, Luo and Luhya names with all birth certificates. These birth certificates were issued in Kenya. Therefore, what we said is that if we have a child below eight years, they will be presumed Kenyan. The reason they will be presumed so, is because in law when you talk about a presumption, it means that if we find other reasons to show otherwise, then it will be rebutted. So it is not guaranteed and then in any event, a law shall be passed that will ensure that there is a mechanism that will show us. Many of these children are Kenyan children, speak with Kenyan accents like me and you. They speak our local languages and, therefore, indeed, they are Kenyans. We cannot tell who their mothers and fathers are, either because they were thrown in dustbins when they were born and so forth, we are not able to document them. That is one of the reasons that we, in the children’s sector and not mischievous persons as has been indicated, especially from outside the country, encouraged such provisions be put into our proposed Constitution."
}