Entry Instance

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

{
    "id": 94726,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/94726/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 213,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mrs. Odhiambo-Mabona",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 376,
        "legal_name": "Millie Grace Akoth Odhiambo Mabona",
        "slug": "millie-odhiambo-mabona"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, for giving me this opportunity to support this Report. From the outset, I want to thank the Committee that came up with this Report. Even though I was a Member of the Committee, I was not a very faithful Member especially when they were going out of the country because I was incapacitated but I was there when we received various reports. I want to specifically remember the reports that we received from the civil society organizations like the Oscar Foundation. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I want to say at the outset that if we were in a developed country and we received reports of the nature we received from the Oscar Foundation, it would have brought the country to a standstill because the number of persons and young persons who were identifiable with faces and with names that have died was actually shocking even to me. It is just that we cannot open up the pages and show Members but I wish we could actually do that. Sometimes, as a country, we need to do that kind of shock therapy that people can actually see that we have thousands of young people who are dying and are undocumented. When they die, we do not even care and they are Kenyans. For me, that is one of the reasons why I am very happy that this Committee put as much energy and effort in looking at the issue of organized crime especially amongst the youth. One of the things that is very evident is that the majority of the persons involved in these organized groups are youths. As a country, that is actually the heart of our resource and that is what moves any country. If we are investing in the negative in this country by letting our own people die, by letting our own people destroy themselves, then we are investing in a very wrong future. Nonetheless, I want to say there is hope with the passing of the Constitution and as a country, for as long as I have lived since I was a young person, every time you ask Kenyans a question, the answer is that we have poor laws. Now we have a Constitution that is very progressive and an organized Crimes Bill that is very progressive. I wonder what our question is now. Our question now should be: How do we focus on the resources we have in transforming our youth? I would just want to urge that as a Government and as a country that we must embrace a human rights- based approach to dealing with these issues. In a human rights-based approach, we do not look at economic development as an end itself but we look at economic concurrently with human development. If we focus on economic development without developing our young people, then we will have generations of disempowered people who will stand against their own country that is seeking to develop. That is why we must concurrently develop our young people, invest in education, capacity building and economically empower our young people. The only thing that I would want to take issue with in the Report is that it mentions that we have empowered the girls at the expense of the boy child. I think that would be true only to a very small part of the country especially Central Kenya. But if you look at the rest of the country, the empowerment of the girl child is still very low. We are, therefore, calling on the Government to ensure that the empowerment of the girl child gets at par with that of the boy child. That is why I would want to say still that I am indeed very happy that the proposed Constitution not only empowers women through representation but through other mechanisms; through principles that it enunciates and even through other mechanisms. For instance, in Government tendering, there shall be one third representation of women. In all facets of life in this country, there shall be one third representation of women. Finally, in supporting this Report, I would want to encourage our church that with the same vigour that they opposed abortion, they should use that energy to fight the sort of malady that is destroying our youth and support a youth that is in the church and that their lives are changed and transformed by the Gospel that they preach in the church. With those few remarks I support."
}