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"id": 198947,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Ms. Abdalla",
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"speaker": {
"id": 245,
"legal_name": "Abdallah Jumaa Ngozi",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to contribute to this important Motion. On behalf of the Great Lakes Forum on Amani and its regional Executive Council, of which I am a member, I wish to congratulate hon. Ndung'u for bringing this Motion. We, as a nation, are in the forefront of signing international instruments that we have no intention of either ratifying or domesticating. In this country, we have no national mechanism through which international instruments are discussed before ratification is to be undertaken. That means that those technocrats we send to meetings go ahead and advise for signing of the instruments without having any consultative processes so that we can give input as to whether the instruments are in our favour or not. I have in mind the fact that the Attorney-General of Kenya signed an instrument outlawing death penalty yet he very well knows that, that matter is extremely contentious and he would not, in this lifetime, be able to convince Kenyans to implement it. However, the situation is worse in regional peace agreements and regional instruments. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, our Government uses international peace agreements as public relations exercises that are very expensive to our taxpayers and does not do anything in terms of follow-up on ratification or in terms of economic or social benefits that we derive from the investment that we put in these peace agreements. I have in mind the Sudanese Peace Agreement. We wasted a lot of our time and resources in the peace agreement for Southern Sudan. Our Minister for Foreign Affairs was hardly ever in this House because he invested his time and that of his technocrats in his Ministry to negotiate and mediate that agreement. The Ministry left it at that. After that agreement was achieved, they did not do any follow up. The South Africans went ahead and took over the economic benefits of the peace agreement that Kenya's Ministry of Foreign Affairs had toiled for, for a very long time. So, as we call for the ratification of the International Peace Agreement on the Great Lakes, we must be ready to question ourselves so that we do not handle international agreements and mediation as public relation exercises to show that Kenyans are good mediators yet we are not reaping any benefits from our investments. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, let me go back to the issue of the International Peace Agreement on the Great Lakes Region. Article 12 emphasises the issue on the rule of law. It deals with the protection of displaced persons, among other issues. The current administration has performed extremely poorly in respecting both national and international human rights law. One of the things we have done consistently, since this Government came into place, is to take personal and very myopic decisions about displaced persons. A case in point is the fact that we returned Somali refugees by claiming that they were economic refugees. We also did not go through the legal procedures of determining the nationalities of those people who were arrested having crossed the border after the Islamic Court Union was defeated in Somalia. The consequence of not following the rule of law is that, as we speak now, there are 22 Kenyans languishing in Ethiopian cells while the other people, who were deported without due procedure, have all been taken back by their 4532 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES October 17, 2007 countries. The Swedish have been taken back. The Emirates have taken back their nationals and Tanzanians have done the same. What we are telling this Government and subsequent governments is that; it is fine to fight terrorism and displaced persons who might be coming into the country with arms and bringing instability into our country through the rule of law. We should charge them in a court of law. For example, if they were found to be Kenyans and they had enlisted to serve in a foreign army, we should charge them for serving in a foreign army. We should not let them be taken to Ethiopia and then discover, very late, especially in an election year, that we cannot move forward unless these people are brought back. These are issues of rule of law that our country must take into account as we move forward in our development. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I was surprised that hon. Sungu could mention that Felician Kabuga is a genocide perpetrator who has been shielded by subsequent governments. It is in my understanding that he is the financier of the political party that he is in!"
}