Kenya: ‘I was paid Sh100 monthly as a househelp’: The plight of a stateless woman
Published: 17/Sep/2020
Source: The Nation (Nairobi)
By Lucy Mkanyika
Ms Makumbo has not been enjoying the rights and privileges given by the government as she is always referred to as non-Kenyan
because of her lack of identification documents.
Kenya Human Rights Commission said the agency is working to ensure that the government eradicates statelesness by issuing
identification documents to deserving people.
The state has already granted citizenship to the Makonde and Nubian communities.
It has now been 40 years since Ms Rose Makumbo came to Kenya from Tanzania. She hardly remembers who brought her into the country.
The 45-year-old, found herself homeless at the border town of Taveta in Taita-Taveta in 1977 after the woman she came to visit abandoned her.
“All I remember is that I used to sleep in the cold and wellwishers used to give me food,” she says.
She says she escaped from her country after her extended family abandoned her following the death of her parents and siblings. She says she
was left with no home and no one to take care of her.