Kenya wants the UN Security Council to recognise al Shabaab as a terrorist organisation
Kenya wants the UN Security Council to recognise al Shabaab as a terrorist organisation. The government has appealed to the Council to help Kenya fight the militants.
Youth and Gender Chief Administrative Secretary Rachael Shebesh on Tuesday said it is absurd that the Council does not perceive al Shabaab as a terrorist group.
The militants continue terrorising people without fear of reprisal, she said. Shebesh said she was taken aback by the Council’s indifference.
Shebesh spoke at a forum on the role of women in preventing and countering violent extremism. The event was organised by Coast Education Centre in Mombasa.
The CAS had earlier attended the 63rd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, which took place at the United Nations Headquarters in New York from March 11 to 22.
“It is at this meeting that I came to know that the UN Security Council has not recognised al Shabaab as a terrorist organisation,” Shebesh said.
The UN lists groups like al Qaeda and ISIS as terrorist organisations.
“You have been in Kenya long enough. Please tell your friends to come so that we can show them the damage done by al Shabaab. Sometimes, it is even more than ISIS and al Qaeda,” Shebesh told Amy Hamelin, the USAID deputy chief in charge of Kenya and East Africa.
The CAS said the Somalia-based militants are killing Kenyan children and are on a mission to finish the East African region.
If the militants are put in the list of terrorist organisations, the whole world, led by the UN, would help Kenya fight them, she said.
Al Shabaab has launched several attacks in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. They have killed more than 300 people in the last five years.
The latest attack in Nairobi at the Dusit hotel complex on Riverside Drive on January 15. At least 21 people were killed. Al Shabaab also carried out the August 16, 2013 terror attack at Westgate Mall in which 71 people were killed.
The terrorists also slaughtered 148 people during the April 2, 2015 Garissa University College attack.
Shebesh Kenya helps Somali refugees who flee their country because of the war in their country caused by al Shabaab and the militant groups.
Source: The Star
