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{
    "id": 1211466,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1211466/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 176,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Uasin Gishu County, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Gladys Boss",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Hon. Temporary Speaker, allow me today to focus on the one in relation to gender inclusion and affirmative action. This is the only area that does not have many subscribers. I know that matters relating to the NG-CDF and other funds have many subscribers but the gender question has been bedevilled by many setbacks in this country for many years. This has largely been a part of my professional life and it should go on record how difficult it has been to achieve the two-thirds gender threshold. It is important to look back in history because it will convince us that this message, coming from the President, is extremely important. It is the closest we have come to actualising the two-thirds gender rule considering the level at which the matter is being canvased. The two- thirds gender rule question has a long history. It started with the Beijing Conference, where women from this country were led by Hon. Nyiva Mwendwa, who is a great woman indeed. At that time, affirmative action was neither entrenched in our Constitution nor would it be spoken about in this country. The women came back from Beijing with great hope because Kenya was on its way to sign the United Nations Convention on Human Rights. The matter of the two-thirds gender rule is not a women or men issue but a human rights issue of equality. This was followed by the women’s caucus in Bomas during the constitutional conference, which finally culminated in us having Articles 81 and 100 of the Constitution. It clearly states that not more than two- thirds of either gender should be in any elective or appointive positions. At this stage, we managed to put in our Constitution the fact that we must include people with disabilities, youth, ethnic minorities and women of all spheres of life, in our country. These Articles, despite being put in the Constitution, did not achieve much. This is because thereafter, Parliament was required to enact a law to implement this particular part of our Constitution. Since this did not happen, the women’s movement and the civil society that deals with matters to do with women and human rights – which has been part of my professional life, went to the Supreme Court to seek for advisory. The Supreme Court said it expected implementation would have happened within 10 years after the Constitution was promulgated. This was in 2015 and despite that advisory, nothing happened. Around that time, the late Justice Onguto – may God rest his soul – made a landmark decision of the court. He declared the then Cabinet unconstitutional because it did not meet the two-thirds gender rule threshold. This was after the now Governor for Kirinyaga, Hon. Waiguru; and the immediate former Governor for Kitui County, Hon. Charity Ngilu, were removed from the Cabinet. At that time, we had a shortage of women in the Cabinet. The late Justice Onguto declared that the Cabinet was unconstitutional. He only preserved and allowed it to continue because we were about to go for a general election. Therefore, it ought to have been implemented in 2017. Justice Ongutu died shortly after making that ruling. In fact, as a women’s movement, we were worried that maybe he was killed because he had supported us. Thereafter, a chorus was started by negative minded people in our society and some Government operatives who decided that the wage bill had become an issue and that the exacerbating factors were women and devolution. They attempted to reduce the constituencies from 290 to 210, and the counties from 47 to 10. Through Hon. Joe Mutambu, they attempted to remove from the Constitution, the paragraph that says “not more than two-thirds of any appointive or elective positions can be held by one gender”. Thank God this backfired. Thereafter, we made several attempts. We had the Chepkonga Bill, which was unacceptable to the women’s movement and I. This is because it said that the two-thirds gender rule should be achieved progressively. We must put it on record that the United Nations Convention on Human Rights, to which Kenya is a signatory, states that human rights are The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}