Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 707406,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/707406/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 128,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Kubai Iringo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1574,
        "legal_name": "Cyprian Kubai Iringo",
        "slug": "cyprian-kubai-iringo"
    },
    "content": "come from different countries. We get the biggest influx of refugees from the countries which surround us. There are others who come from afar, even abroad, and try to hide here. We need to engage the international community, the African Union (AU) and the United Nations (UN) so that the country should not carry the burden of maintaining and taking care of these refugees. We need to have a framework whereby the international community chips in for the temporary stay of these people who have come from their motherland because of one reason or the other. As the Bill states, we need to accord them their human rights. They should be treated like any other human being. They should be handled with a lot of respect but there should be limitations as to where they stay. We should have designated areas where they are supposed to stay. They should be vetted on how they came, why they have come and what made them get away from their country. They should also be registered and their status indicated as refugees. Their movements should be limited. When refugees come to our country, especially from neighbouring Somalia, they intermingle and join the other citizens. At the end of the day, if they commit crime, they have no identification and their whereabouts cannot be traced. That is why we have a lot of insecurity in the northern part of Kenya. They should be vetted by the commission. It should be known where they stay and what they do. The areas they stay should be guarded. If they have to go to other parts of the country, they should be given permits so that it is known where they have gone. I appreciate the issues of education and medical care as brought out in the Bill. They are humans and they should get the same. They should also be protected. There should be a formula of taking them back home. We should monitor to know the situation in the country. Is it the right time to take them back to their country or do they need to stay further? The commission should further consult with the mother country to see that these people stay the minimum time possible. Sometimes, they also become a burden to us. If the situation in their country is normalised, they have to go back. If it is a criminal who has run away because he has done one or two things, he should be repatriated back to that country and should not be held as a refugee in our country. We should not have a fixed number of refugees, like the one million we talked about, as if they came to live here permanently. Our Government is doing everything to get them to go back. If others come back, we will at least have some space to keep them so that they do not overcrowd the refugee camps and the other places. Once these refugees come to our country, we should have a kitty to take care of them and also urge the international community to supplement the same. We should not have a fixed budget for them because we do not know how many of them will come to our country. We can have a kitty in the Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government which can be used to supplement or mitigate the refugees when they come and also organise for their return. The Bill is quite perfect. I support it but we need to implement the amendments, especially those ones which were mentioned by the Committee and others which may come later, so that we can at least polish the Bill and not gag ourselves or put our country into a situation where we consider refugees to be at the same level as citizens of this country or give them an elevated status such that when they come here, they become a burden to our country. I support the Bill."
}