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{
    "id": 746046,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/746046/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 427,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Okoth",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 12482,
        "legal_name": "Kenneth Odhiambo Okoth",
        "slug": "kenneth-odhiambo-okoth"
    },
    "content": "Hon. Temporary Deputy Chairman, the Hon. Member for Garissa County does not have her card today and she wishes to speak to this as she is a representative of a county that has hosted refugees for two decades or more. I just wanted to bring that to your attention. She is trying to catch your eye. Clause 35 deals with access to land. When you look at best practices in the region, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, all handle refugee issues very differently. They allow refugees to go out and be self-dependent. In the case of Kenya, we have allowed refugees to be stuck in refugee camps. That is our encampment policy. You can see the security risk it has bred when three generations of people have lived in one place since 1990s. They are born in the camps and are basically imprisoned. That has brought about some of the unique security problems we have seen, apart from the fact that we share a border with Somalia. But in countries such as Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia, refugees are allowed to... There is no huge refugee industrial complex of NGOs, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or all those other bodies providing handouts. Their refugees are allowed to live off their own sweat with dignity; take care of themselves; contribute to the local economy; their movements are monitored and their registration is properly done. I beg the Chair and everybody to support the proposal as it is here. What Hon. Aghostinho proposed is that they will not acquire or hold free-hold land interest in Kenya. They cannot sell or lease land. They just access the land for their own subsistence, whether they are doing pastoral farming or subsistence farming. This is important. Clause 35(3) talks about how to legally acquire or dispose of their tenancy and lease in places where refugees are tenants. Here we are talking about durable solutions, integrating refugees and allowing them to live in dignity because there is donor fatigue. Right now, the most fashionable - for lack of a better word - and attention-getting refugee crisis in the world where we have 60 million refugees is the Syrian refugee crisis. People are paying attention to the refugee crisis in Syria. The Government of Kenya is left with an empty basket in hand. Countries like Turkey negotiated with the European Union (EU) just last year to get over US$6 billion to take care of Syrian refugees in Turkey. The Iraqi Government is being engaged to warehouse - for lack of a better word - Syrian and Iraqi refugees within safe zones in Iraq. But nobody is giving us any more money. 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."
}