Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the ambassador and wish him well on his appointment. We have all followed with alarm what is happening right across parts of Africa, including Kenya, and the Middle East. Every right-thinking person is revolted to see young students with their lives ahead of them and all their ambitions to be realised being slaughtered in the manner in which they were in Kenya. The victims were separated because they were Christians and killed as such. That is a common feature of many of these types of atrocities.

I note some of the measures the Kenyan Government is putting in place to tackle terrorism mirror actions we took in this country. However, I wonder, given the internationally embedded nature of terrorism right across the regions concerned, whether Kenya alone, or any single country, can deal with it. The ambassador described plans to sequester and freeze bank accounts, which is something that was done effectively in Ireland with the introduction of the Criminal Assets Bureau. I saw a report recently in The New York Timeswhich indicated that Daesh has an annual income in the order of $2 billion per year. Anything the Kenyan Government does will merely scratch the surface of that. There appears to be at least some links, however tenuous, between many of these groups. Boko Haram was mentioned, as well as al-Shabaab and Daesh. All of these groups are interconnected to a degree and are all comprised of radicalised individuals.

Will the ambassador comment on the assistance, or lack of same, Kenya is receiving? We have heard a lot of soundbites coming from Western governments, including our own Government, the European Union, the United States and so on. However, some of the countries making these pronouncements were actually instrumental in the rise of this radicalism when they moved into situations where they perceived a threat. Now, when there is a real threat, they seem to be standing back and, like spectators on the sideline, commenting but doing nothing. That is a disgrace in a context where young, innocent people are in grave danger and, such as in the case of the Christians from Ethiopia who fled through Libya, being slaughtered by terrorists.

The United Nations is very good at trying to impose a certain radical feminist agenda on African countries, which is alien to their culture. I do not see that organisation being as strongly focused on these real issues, where the loss of innocent lives is happening. Will the ambassador comment on that?

I note that the co-chairs of the UN committee which is dealing with the new sustainable development goals are the Irish ambassador and the Kenyan ambassador to the UN. We welcome this close engagement with Kenya on the issue.

This meeting is not necessarily an occasion for putting Kenya or its policies under the microscope. The ambassador's country, like our own, has deficiencies in the manner of its administration and its policies. However, the fundamental problems we are discussing today are of such a monumental scale that our focus should be exclusively on them to see how they can be eradicated. The ambassador referred to radicals moving into refugee camps. It is easy to radicalise people who are very poor. What types of law and order structures are in operation within the camps? Do they come under the remit of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR? Some of us have visited such camps, including the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, which was home to 120,000 refugees when we were there. I understood that number subsequently increased to at least 150,000. There were no police at the camp. The people running it were aware that Christians had to pretend they were Muslim to avoid being killed. Women were being raped and forced into prostitution. How well managed and policed are the camps in Kenya? What would the ambassador like to see the international community doing to assist as distinct from what it is saying about the situation?