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{
    "id": 1354524,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1354524/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 350,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kilgoris, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Julius Sunkuli",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Hon. Temporary Speaker, I am happy to speak after my friend from Samburu. Actually, his name means, “he has a lot of goats”, and that is why he said it is a very easy name. I support the Motion on the ratification of the 1970 UNESCO Convention. The subject matter is on the artefacts belonging to each country in the world and in our context, belonging to Kenya. During the days of the British empire, many things that were valuable to countries were taken to Britain and other capitals in the world, especially of the countries that colonised Africa. The country that suffered most was Egypt because there was Egyptomania where everybody was taking something from Egypt and putting it in their museums so that they can get the bragging rights. They took items from Egypt and sold them to wealthy collectors in their countries. They kept them in their museums and made money from them because they were valuable items. You can talk about the Kingdom of Benin and its bronze; the artefacts from Eswatini; and, the archaeological artefacts of Kenya. Therefore, UNESCO decided that it is better to have a convention that will protect those artefacts from being stolen. You know, many artefacts have been returned to Kenya as a result of mutual negotiations. However, the UNESCO Convention requires each country to participate in the protection of those artefacts. One of the measures that is required by the UNESCO Convention is that each country should have an inventory of its artefacts. Those inventories should form an international inventory so that people do not claim that what was not stolen from them was actually stolen. Once each country has an inventory, it is going to be very protective. In our country, we have a number of museums. They are not as many as we would have wished to have. We have the Murumbi Heritage, which is next to Nyayo House. We have national museums in Nairobi and Kisumu and, of course, we have Fort Jesus in Mombasa. However, we need to have an inventory of the country’s museums to know what we actually own so that we protect the artefacts. We must also establish export certificates. Indeed, that is what the Convention requires of us. The 1970 UNESCO Convention requires each country to have a way of controlling the export of its artefacts from their countries. We must also establish border controls so that people do not go out of the country with what is valuable to us. Once we ratify the 1970 UNESCO Convention, we will be committing ourselves to doing those things. We will have to put in our Penal Code or in our criminal system, offences so that we punish the people who are found guilty of committing such offences. For example, taking away artefacts from the country should be a punishable offence. We are also supposed to do public education to our people. That is one thing that is more difficult for us. We must educate people on what is valuable and what is not. Kenyans are not good at going to museums. The only people who go to the Kenya National Museum are children from schools. They leave their schools to go and view two things: 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."
}