STATEMENT BY HON. RAPHAEL TUJU, EGH, MP MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS DURING THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS RECEPTION ON 26TH JANUARY 2006 H.E. Nabeel Ashour, Ambassador of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, Your Excellencies Ambassadors and High Commissioners, UN Resident Representatives, Heads of Regional and International Organizations, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, It gives me great pleasure to welcome you all to this reception. This occasion affords me the opportunity to meet you all since I was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs by H.E. the President. I bring you his sincere greetings. I take this opportunity to thank you for your messages of goodwill and congratulations. I look forward to fruitful cooperation between Kenya and your respective countries. First and foremost, I would like to thank Your Excellencies for messages of support and condolences for the victims of the building which collapsed killing 16 Kenyans and which injured many more. Special words of thanks to Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States of America for their quick response to the Government s appeal for specialized rescue assistance. Their participation helped save more lives than would have been the case without their presence. May I also take this opportunity to thank the people and governments of so many of your countries that have favorably responded to the appeal by President Kibaki for assistance with respect to the drought and famine crisis that we face at this time. We are encouraged by your response, but the needs continue to grow and we appeal for more assistance. But even as I appeal for assistance, I am the first one to say that this is not an emergency in the strict sense of the word. We may call it a disaster, a crisis but not an emergency. I say this because we all know that drought and famine are pretty regular in our part of the world. We should be expecting one next year and another the year after.
Two days ago, I worked with my colleague Ministers from the Horn of Africa to sponsor an A.U. resolution to draw attention to this perennial challenge. Since we all know that this disaster is likely to recur next year, I appeal to our development partners to collaborate with us in making investment now and in future in those areas that are fundamental to ensuring food security like the expansion of irrigation fed agriculture, food storage technology and distribution mechanism. As a government, we are doing our best to make the right investment. For example the Ministry of Water received a three-fold increase in budget allocation from the previous annual budget of 2.8 billion to the current 9 billion. Trippling budget allocation to water sectors is a major policy step just a kin to the free primary school programme. The water and Agricultural sectors deserve all the support possible. In the new world order, economic issues are increasingly taking center stage in international diplomacy. The Kenyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs has to make a paradigm shift fast and aggressively and I like to alert you that you will witness that policy shift in our future contacts with you. Economic diplomacy is going to drive Kenya s foreign policy during my tenure of office. So the following are the type of subjects that I expect to discuss with you: - Swaziland has just hired 100 Kenyan nurses. I thank them indeed and I am going to discuss with them about tripling the number. Currently some 10,000 Kenyans are working in United Arab Emirates. Some 800 of them with the Emirates Airline alone. During my last visit to the Emirates I discussed increasing this number with the UAE authorities. Two days ago during my bilateral discussions with Tanzanian Minister for Education we agreed on Tanzania hiring some 50 of our graduate mathematic teachers for a start. In my bilateral discussions with the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Gambia, apart from exchange of diplomatic niceties, we 2
discussed about the Gambians hiring of prosecutors and judges from Kenya. I am grateful to the British High Commission in Nairobi because the most important substance of our discussion with him in the last few days has been the inclusion of Kenyans aged between 18 and 30 years on a 2-year working holiday program in the U.K. I believe the High Commission will push that agenda for us with his home Government. In our discussions with the Kingdom of Thailand, they have agreed to employ Kenyan English teachers and I am looking forward to the day I will escort those teachers to the airport. I am giving these examples so that you understand the type of issues that we are keen to discuss with your Excellencies beyond diplomacy. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will not just be conducting diplomacy for diplomacy s sake. We must and we will be responsive to the challenges and needs of the country. Mutually beneficial trade and employment opportunities for one of greatest resource the very well educated Kenyans are the issues that will define our diplomacy. I could put it in another way. You are meeting today with the new Minister for Foreign Affairs who prefers to be mainly seen as an honorary assistant minister for trade and an honorary assistant minister for labour. The export of skilled labour has not been a major foreign policy agenda for this Ministry but I like to inform you that we are bringing it right up in our policy priorities. This is a country with 70% of its population being aged below 30 years. Some of your countries have a demographical profile which is quite the opposite. We believe that this challenge of a young population can be changed to become an advantage. Besides there is empirical evidence at the moment that shows that remittances by migrant workers from developing countries has now overtaken donor grants to the poor countries. 3
Kenya aspires to strengthen ties with her traditional development partners while at the same time recognises the need to increase her cooperation with new and emerging markets in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. We will step up our participation in the Group of Fifteen Developing Countries to exploit the considerable potential for greater and mutually beneficial cooperation among developing countries, particularly in the areas of investment, trade and technology. We will work closely with other WTO member countries to conclude negotiations this year, press for the elimination of subsidies by the year 2013 and increase in export assistance to the poorest countries as agreed during the Hong Kong Meeting of the Ministers of Trade in 2005. Kenya will also strive to strengthen her economic cooperation with her partners under various frameworks, namely, the Tokyo International Conference on Africa s Development (TICAD), the China-Africa Cooperation Forum, the Asia-Africa Sub-Regionall Organisations Conference, the newly launched New Asian-African Strategic Partnership (NAASP), the Asia-Africa Summit, Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), and the African, Caribbean and Europe (ACP/EU) among others. In all these, we will aim to expand market for our exports, attract more tourists, seek employment opportunities for our highly qualified manpower, and encourage direct foreign investment. We are faced with many challenges especially financial constraints in our pursuit to implement the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and realise the set targets by 2015. We regard MDGs as important vehicles in poverty reduction and improving health, education, sanitation, provision of clean water and other social amenities. It will require the Government Kenya Shillings Four Hundred and Seventy Six Billion (Kshs: 476 billion) annually to achieve the aims of MDGs. A number of factors including recurrent drought and heavy debt burden amounting to Kenya Shillings Four Hundred and Forty Nine Billion (Kshs: 449 billion) militate against our effort to press on with the MDG agenda. 4
Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen: Having said the type of subjects that will feature in our bilaterals let me venture briefly into the multilateral area. With a foreign debt portfolio of 449 billion, Kenya is not listed as one of the most indebted countries. But let us appreciate that it is a heavy burden. Last year, Kenyans paid some 14 billion shillings as principle and interest with much more actually falling due. In order to remain credit worthy and in order to maintain the dignity of our land, we continue to pay our debts come floods, drought or famine. We simply pay. While because we pay, our development partners advance the argument that we must continue to pay. But those countries that have refused to pay or have gone broke are the ones that have received debt cancellation as a gift for not paying. Even some better-endowed countries have recently had their debts reduced. I am not able to understand this policy that is actively encouraging Kenya to be delinquent with respect to our international debts before we can be rewarded. The agenda of debt cancellation is going to define our engagement with our multi-lateral partners. On these matters, I will be making a submission to our relevant committees of parliament, so that all Kenyans can understand these matters as being of national interest. Kenya, the only developing country to host the United Nations offices is seeking to enhance the capacity of the United Nations Office in Nairobi to bring it to the same level as the UN Centres in Geneva and Vienna. We therefore, appeal to the UN member countries to support Nairobi to continue hosting the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and United Nations Centre for Settlement (HABITAT). We seek to strengthen UNEP and HABITAT and also to play a role in representing the collective interest of the continent in the UN System. I am willing to work with you towards achieving these objectives. 5
The challenge of peace One of the greatest challenges confronting us in this country and in the region is the maintenance of peaceful co-existence. Virtually all the countries in our region are Geographical phenomenon rather than nation States. In Kenya we actually have more than 40 different nationalities. We sometimes call them tribes. Our challenge as a country is how to forge nationhood out of that diversity. That diversity can be a curse as well being a blessing. The curse aspect is what we see in the frequent quarrels between the tribes that greatly undermine progress. We have seen our aspirations with respect to achieving a better constitutional dispensation undermined by ethnic tensions and distrust. In the fight against corruption, or in the civil service reform, ethnicity or tribalism do easily become a contaminant. Usually such tension remain subterranean and therefore not comprehensible to diplomats like you apart from those who are ready to do the hard work of getting information beyond the cocktail circuit. Refusal to appreciate the complexity of the ethnic differences is in large part responsible for the failed States that are a feature of the Great Lakes region. The reality of ethnic differences is naked. It is an embarrassing nakedness that we have often refused to confront in the mirror just like the case of racial tension in Europe and in North American and elsewhere. Fortunately in your parts of the world you have the resources and institutional structures that can withstand the pressures of such tensions even if they over flow into the streets in the form of riots. In countries in our region where our institutions that should form the coping mechanism are still in their embryonic stages street riots along ethnic lines have on occasions degenerated into civil strife. As Kenya takes the chair of the second conference on Peace, Security, Democracy and Development in the Great Lakes Region, We will be bringing into the table a more in-depth understanding of the dynamics that result in conflict in our country and region. 6
I do not believe in casual diplomatic speak that will simply gloss over the issues as it affects our country and the whole great lakes region. Finally let me conclude by dispensing some food for thought for you my friends. There is a Chinese saying that: Stay in a place for just one day And you can write a book Stay for two weeks and you can write an article. Stay in the same place for one year and you can write nothing because you will be lost for words. The more you know about Kenya the more you will understand just how complex the place is. And when you know how complex it is you will have less to say or if you say it it will be a better-informed statement. I am not in anyway trying to gag our diplomatic community; after all you are stakeholders in Nairobi. As a county, which hosts some of United Nations Headquarters and regional offices of the UN bodies, I am awake to the fact that we cannot be Independent from the rest of the world. Inter dependence is the much higher ideal that must characterise our relationship. Our development partners or put it bluntly, the donor countries do have a legitimate right to raise important issues like corruption in the management of our public affairs. I say so because donations that we receive from these countries are from taxes of the citizens of those countries. So there must be accountability for those funds both your governments and our governments. So speak to us. Call me. Speak your mind But remember, I am most anxious and keen and willing and craving for building good relations with you based on mutual respect. I believe that the way forward is constructive engagement even between adversaries. I believe that more can be achieved through a simple phone call, or round table meeting rather than simply playing to the mass media gallery. I said it before and I say it again. I will be polite. I will follow diplomatic channels to address you and not through the mass media or public gallery. 7
Like myself, most of you do have some domestic workers probably living in the same compound with you. I may go to their quarters, abuse them in front of their children. They will not reply. Because they know that if they dare reply then I could throw them out of the compound. And with job scarcity that you have in Nairobi, the servants will just answer, yes sir. It does not matter what I shout to them, their children may only look at me with blank faces or run for cover But I am not so sure that I earn their respect. I am more or less in the same dilemma as a Minister, You may abuse me and humiliate me as all Kenyans watch and hear. And even if I say yes sir, you should not be so sure that you have earned my respect and that of Kenyans. One of the most enduring scenes in the film, colour purple is where Whoopy Goldberg is acting as a slave to this very cruel and bullying master. Whoopy the slave dare not show her displeasure. The only thing she can do in retaliation is to make sure that every time she is taking drinking water to her master she makes a point of spitting in the water and stirring it with her finger. In conclusion, I wish to appeal for your co-operation, tolerance and understanding. Whenever you have an issue, please do call us. We as a ministry are there to work with you. My friends, I am so keen in building a good relationship with you and in an increasingly interdependent world, you may one day ask me to get for you a glass of water. I do not wish to spit in your glass of water. Let us work together within the context of mutual respect. Thank you Ladies and Gentlemen. 8