Dual citizenship in Kenya: a case for its provision under Kenyan law.

Abstract

In Kenya, whether to make provision for dual citizenship in our Kenyan Constitution or not has been the subject of much debate. This was seen more clearly in the deliberations of the delegates involved in the process of reviewing the Constitution of Kenya between 2003 and 2004. Delegates were divided into two camps. There were those for and that are against its provision in the New Constitution. It is worth noting, that Kenya has been reviewing its current Constitution for the last two years. Allowing dual citizenship has been one of these contested issues hence the debate. The Kenyan government has frowned upon Kenyans acquiring other citizenships, because in some way or another this has shown disloyalty to the Kenyan citizenship. Kenyan citizens who do this have been perceived to be unpatriotic to their country. However, this is not the case. Our Kenyan citizenship laws have been discriminatory to women in that Kenyan women living abroad cannot as the laws stand confer citizenship to their children born abroad. Their male counterparts on the other hand can confer automatic Kenyan citizenship to their children born in the same circumstances. Further, women who are Kenyan citizens who get married to non Kenyans automatically lose their Kenyan citizenship to embrace that of their husband since Kenya does not allow dual citizenship. These women can neither confer Kenyan citizenship to their foreign husbands nor, their children. To other Kenyan citizens who seek to acquire foreign citizenship by naturalization, they should not be denied their rights as Kenyan citizens due to the fact that they have embraced foreign citizenships. Our