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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir. Let me thank the Minister for his information as he was moving his Vote. This Parliament has not debated the budget of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for over 20 years. Yet, this Ministry consumes a large amount of taxpayers' money. It is normally the sixth or seventh biggest Ministry in terms of budget. This has led to questions and accusations about patronage and corruption, within this particular Ministry. I congratulate the Minister for making sure it has come before this House. This is a sign of transparency on behalf of the Ministry. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, as a member of the Departmental Committee on Defence and Foreign Relations we are aware that there is a draft foreign policy which should be tabled by the Ministry. However, other Members outside of the Committee, do not know about it. I would like to urge the Minister, as soon as possible, to be able to table it, so that Members of Parliament are able August 28, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3487 to understand the shift the Ministry has now made to economic diplomacy and what their priorities are under that policy. I think it is a good thing that Parliament must support the issue of expenditure for development. For many years, our embassies and missions have been renting premises instead of buying a small little \"Kenya\" in whichever country they are in. I think that this Kshs6 billion will be wisely spent. I would be encouraging the Minister to ensure that every year we do continue to purchase our own buildings, so that we are not embarrassed as Kenyans, when we go abroad, that we do not have our own little \"Kenya\" in those countries where we are. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, right now, we have so many Kenyans living in the diaspora. Some of them are even criminals, languishing in jails. It is time that we started focusing on them. The first thing that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should do is to tell us how they are taking care of Kenyans living abroad. We can take care of those people in so many ways. First of all, instead of using that money to employ foreigners in those countries, we need to ensure that we employ Kenyans who are living in those countries. That would be a good way of trying to reduce the Ministry's budget. I know that we proposed that this should be done, particularly, when we are saying that we should not be paying cooks and drivers as much money as we have done in the past. It is true that the Committee visited many missions abroad. We are saying that there have to be cooks in certain embassies, because being able to show our local foods is part of the things that we do in diplomacy. However, again, the locals who are employed at that level should be employed on local terms. I am glad to see that the Ministry is starting to do that and reducing the sort of costs that we used to incur on this kind of personnel. I am happy that some of the money that we are going to vote for this Ministry is also going to be used, yet again, in terms of Kenyans living in the diaspora by ensuring that we have a database and registers of Kenyans living abroad. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, this is very important for many reasons, one being the fact that we are soon going to approve the issue of dual citizenship in the minimum package on the constitutional reforms. Even if that does not happen this year, it will happen next year. Therefore, in terms of getting ready for Kenyans abroad to vote in 2012, the Ministry needs to set aside some money to ensure that they have a register and database, telling us who are the Kenyans living abroad. In the past, many Kenyans who live abroad have always been ignored by our missions out there. When I was a student in England in 1993, I attempted to reach our Embassy in London, to find out what celebrations, or occasions, were being staged for our national Independence Day. I was brushed aside in such a manner that it shocked me. It was as if the people who worked in those embassies were not there for us, or that Kenyans were not paying for them to be there. I have been to other missions in the recent past. I have seen that the situation is changing. Kenyans are actually saying that the Ministry is now changing its policy. They are feeling more welcome, and ambassadors in the various embassies are calling them for special occasions or letting them know when Government delegations would be visiting. That is a good trend. Let us keep it up. However, in order for the Ministry to be able to do so, we need to also put aside some money to re-train some of our officers, who still belong to the old school, as the nominated Member of Parliament, Ms. Abdalla, said. They still belong to the very old school. They have not moved into economic diplomacy. They still sort of imagine that there is a cold war out there. So, this needs to be done. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to talk about the need for information dissemination by our missions abroad to the country. The Departmental Committee on Defence and Foreign Relations visited the Democratic Republic of Congo. Much to our shock, we found that they import milk and vegetables from Belgium, yet Kenya Airways planes fly there every day. Do local 3488 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES August 28, 2007 businessmen know that? That information is with our Mission in Kinshasa but our businessmen in Kenya do not know that. There needs to be a way for that information to reach the local businessmen. Perhaps, we can do this by having joint missions. I am aware that some joint missions exist in Southern Sudan, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs must also reach out to Parliament. The Executive cannot do this on its own. Those of us who are Members of the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) have complained often that we have no linkage to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when we sit in Midrand, South Africa, during PAP Sessions. Therefore, when we make resolutions and come back with them, who is supposed to inform the Head of State, when he goes to the next Head of States Summit, that this is what the PAP had determined or decided? The Ministry needs to make sure that it has a Member of Parliament from the PAP on its missions, or when the President goes for such meetings. After all, Parliament has its own budget. We are not begging the Ministry to pay for us. We just need to show that we are connected, and that the Executive and Parliament are working together. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to talk about the role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in terms of investment of taxpayers' money by giving it back to us through international jobs and candidatures. I am sorry to say that we have had a very poor history in the last Government's tenure, and even at the beginning of this Government's tenure, of losing good international posts. We need to be firm about this. Right now, the new UN Secretary-Generally is picking up his team. He managed to pick his deputy from Tanzania. Where were we? At the beginning of our relationship with the United Nations in Nairobi (UNON), part of our hosting agreement was that the number two of that institution would always be a Kenyan. Right now, there is no such a thing. So, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs must take it upon itself to make that request. In fact, the Ministry should insist on it. Let the UN not go back on their hosting agreement. That position is rightfully ours. We need to get it. Right now, we are in the process of filing candidatures for the Commission of the African Union. I want to plead with the Minister that if we do not see a Kenyan among the Commissioners in January, we will have to come back to this House and discuss it, because the Ministry needs to be able to produce that candidature or secure that position for Kenya. I would like to say that although the responsibility of international agreements lies with the Attorney-General, I have worked at the African Union and, many times, I would see officers from the Embassy in Addis-Ababa come sit, spend a lot of their time in the preliminary meetings negotiating these international instruments. So, we are spending a lot of time with our officers going to work on international instruments, which we subsequently sign and fail to ratify. We do not domesticate them. It is a shame! We need to hold the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as responsible as the Office of the Attorney-General for why we are spending so much money, going to sign documents which Parliament, or Kenya, does not ratify. A case in point is the Protocol on Women's Rights. It is a shame that the President in Maputo, in 2003, was among the Heads of State who agreed to that protocol, which up to now, has not been ratified. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, let me also agree with my colleague in the Opposition, Ms. Abdalla, about the need for the Ministry to go the global trend, which is that positions have been grabbed by women. Any country that is strategic nowadays, and which wants a top-ranking position, puts forward the name of a qualified woman. This is not something that we are doing. So, I would like to encourage the Ministry to also do the same. I have heard the Minister say that they are, really, working on resumes, Curriculum Vitae and vacancies, but still I know that in the PAP, we got no help at all for us to lobby for the seat of the Clerk of the PAP. Thankfully, that job now belongs to a Kenyan. However, there was a gap. The Ministry did not identify a Kenyan to fill that position but we, in Parliament, did. August 28, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3489 With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}