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Disability
is not Inability |
;;Protecting the rights of the disabled
Date: 31/08/2006
Friday 25 August 2006 saw a UN General
Assembly committee approve a UN Convention on the Rights of Persons
with Disabilities. The Convention is the first human rights treaty
of the 21st century and is designed to encourage governments to
pass legislation protecting people with disabilities and to eliminate
discriminatory laws and practices. Lina Lindblom from the Secretariat
of the African Decade of Persons with Disabilities explores the
implications for the 60 million people in Africa living with disabilities.
The first human rights treaty of the twenty-first century has
just been finalised at the United Nations. It will serve to promote
and protect the human rights of 650 million persons with disabilities
around the world. In Africa, the decade between 1999 and 2009
has been proclaimed the African Decade of Persons with Disabilities
by the African Union. The first-ever human rights convention for
persons with disabilities will be an important tool for the Secretariat
that facilitates the implementation of the African Decade’s
plan of action.
Around 60 million persons with disabilities live in Africa. These
individuals are barely visible in most African societies, and
rarely appear to have voices or opinions about general issues
that are brought to our attention by the media. The majority of
them are excluded from schools, work opportunities and participation
in development programs. The African disability movement’s
struggle for human rights is essentially a fight against this
exclusion and against the overwhelming poverty that it leads to.
The Secretariat of the African Decade of Persons with Disabilities
advocates for the inclusion of disability into the existing development
priorities of African Union member states, because the exclusion
of disability from them perpetuates the poverty and despair of
disabled Africans. The new convention constitutes a broad framework
for disability, human rights and development. It will be increasingly
important to associate any work on disability to the convention,
including poverty reduction processes. The African Decade for
Persons with Disabilities, 1999-2009, was proclaimed by the African
Union to address the human rights and development needs of disabled
Africans.
Representatives of DPOs and UN Agencies came up with a continental
plan of action for the Decade. It was endorsed by the executive
counsil of the AU in 2002. The government of the Republic of South
Africa accepted to host the Secretariat of the African Decade
in 2003, and the Secretariat was established in Cape Town, South
Africa, in 2004. The Secretariat facilitates the implementation
of the Continental Plan of Action through its African Decade Disability
Programme (ADDP), a program primarily funded by the governments
of Sweden and Denmark.
One of the working focuses of the disability movement has become
to mainstream disability, i.e. to get disability and persons with
disabilities included in the existing development community. It
is about getting governments and development organisations to
include disability into policies and programs, and to invite persons
with disabilities to participate in the development of these policies
and programs. The disability movement does not want separate,
exclusionary processes, keeping them out of the mainstream societies.
If mainstreaming is a buzz word in the disability movement, how
come they have designed a new and separate human rights convention
just for persons with disabilities?, you may ask. Some within
the movement are indeed wishing that disability had been inserted
and mentioned in the existing human rights provisions instead,
but most people are actively supporting the new convention. Petronella
Linders, who works for the South African government and assisted
the South African delegation to the convention deliberations in
New York, explains that she believes that the convention will
force countries to look at their own legislation from a disability
point of view. In so doing, a separate convention can actually
enhance and enforce mainstreaming of disability into national
legislation. Before, the approach of many African governments
has been to implement human rights provisions for persons with
disabilities on an ad-hoc basis. Now there will be a legally binding
document that governments must implement if they ratify it.
Thomas Ong’olo from Kenya, who works as a program manager
at the Secretariat of the African Decade of Persons with Disabilities,
agrees. He says that the convention will be a crucial instrument
“to remind governments that we are here”. So many
times before, Africans with disabilities have simply been left
out of the equation. It has also been argued that persons with
disabilities find themselves in a legal disadvantage in relation
to other vulnerable groups such as refugees and women, because
the latter have the protection of single bodies of binding norms
in thematic human rights conventions. The convention on the Rights
of the Child has been the only one of the conventions to explicitly
mention persons with disabilities. In the other ones, individuals
with disabilities are only covered as being part of “vulnerable
or marginalized groups”. Governments that ratify the new
convention will be legally bound to treat persons with disabilities
not just as a vulnerable group or a minority, but as subjects
to the law with clearly defined rights.
The process of developing the new convention has been said to
be very participatory and well functioning. More than 400 delegates
and disability advocates from around the world have attended the
eight sessions since 2002 at the United Nations in New York. One
of the few serious problems mentioned is that many persons with
disabilities and Disabled Persons’ Organizations (DPOs)
from developing countries have not been able to attend the meetings,
meaning that their issues and voices have not been adequately
captured in the draft convention. This, again, is down to the
issue of poverty. Many African DPOs have simply not had the money
to send representatives to the United Nations headquarters in
New York.
According to Phitalis Were Masakhwe, an international advisor
on disability within the United Nations, there appears to be a
wide gap between the wishes, needs and aspirations of persons
with disabilities from poor developing countries and those from
the so called developed world. In Africa and parts of Asia people
would have wanted a convention that emphasizes their main challenges;
poverty, disability and conflicts, and invisibility of disability
in international development and cooperation, he says. Thomas
Ong’olo of the African Decade Secretariat agrees. The benchmark
of the discussions in New York has been set by the rich, he argues:
“Sometimes the discussions may be around issues that are
simply not relevant to most Africans, such as choice of services.
Choosing the type of accessible transport you want to use or the
exact time of pickup by that transport of your choice, is not
an issue in developing countries. The main African issue is around
basic survival.”
Implementation is the main concern now. International monitoring
of the convention and international cooperation in the implementation
process have been two of the most difficult issues to agree on
during the eighth session of the convention committee. This is
possibly an even bigger concern in Africa than in other parts
of the world, because of the lack of capacity and funds at the
national level. Many Africans worry that the convention will be
just another document not put into practice by their governments.
The money issue is the predominant concern here too. Putting the
provisions of the convention into practice will be costly. Concerns
have been raised that lack of money will hinder states to meet
even the most urgent obligations. All countries will face costs,
but it will be hardest for developing countries.
International cooperation must play an important part in this,
Ambassador Don MacKay, who chairs the Ad Hoc Committee on the
convention at the United Nations, says, for example in incorporating
into development cooperation programmes elements to assist with
disability related matters.
A worry is also that the DPOs are expected to monitor the governments
in the implementation process, but many of these organisations
in many countries are simply too weak. Training programs are taking
place, but the problem remains. Much more capacity building and
better structures are needed. In the five pilot countries of the
African Decade Disability Program, [1]Decade Steering Committees
(DSCs) have been established, comprised of representatives of
government ministries, DPOs, civil society, media, experts on
disability and international organizations. The private sector
in the countries has been invited to participate. A partnership
between the public and the private sectors is crucial for job
creation and effective resource mobilization.
The major functions of the National Decade Steering Committees
include playing a key role in the preparation of a comprehensive
national plan and in the development of national policy. The committees
also monitor the implementation of policies and programmes for
persons with disabilities in their countries. The African Decade
Secretariat’s plan is to facilitate the establishment of
new committees in at least 15 other African countries by the end
of 2009.[2] The mission of the Secretariat is to empower governments,
DSCs, DPOs and development organisations to work in partnership
to include disability and persons with disabilities into policies
and programs in all sectors of society in Africa. This means that
the emphasis is on capacitating these actors to work together.
One of the Secretariat’s strengths is that we are able to
learn from initiatives in one country, and bring them to (or avoid
them in) another.
We are also engaging large international organisations in the
struggle for mainstreaming. Our experience is that it often only
takes one meeting, a small effort that brings large results if
we manage to get them on board. One current new initiative is
collaboration between the Secretariat and UNESCO, to train African
journalists in how to report on disability issues in a way that
respects their human rights and does not reproduce common stereotypes.
Another is to collaborate with UNICEF to ensure that children
with disabilities are included in their programs.
Prejudice, exclusion, stigmas and a tendency to still view disability
within a charity perspective or a medical model, rather than within
the human rights discourse, are all very real barriers to participation
for persons with disabilities in Africa today. Combined with a
high level of poverty, the African disability movement is facing
an uphill struggle. There are positive signs and opportunities,
however. The topic of disability and development has been featured
in the development discourse for a couple of decades now. Many
global and regional discussions and pledges abound to ensure that
policies, programs and resources are accessible to persons with
disabilities and inclusive of everyone.
Some ten African countries, e.g. Ghana, Malawi, Kenya and South
Africa, have developed White Papers on national disability strategies.
These are model documents for the mainstreaming of disability.
The African Union has taken important and promising initiatives
in recent years, such as proclaiming the African Decade of Persons
with Disabilities. However, Africans with disabilities are increasingly
frustrated by the beautiful words, and want action. For this reason
the establishment of the Secretariat of the African Decade of
Persons with Disabilities is an important step from talk to implementation.
The Decade was proclaimed in 1999. We only started our work at
the Secretariat in 2004. We can regret the delay, but we choose
to focus now on our role as facilitators of the implementation
of the Continental Plan of Action, capacity building, awareness
raising, continued struggle for mainstreaming of disability and
against the poverty and exclusion of disabled Africans. Now we
will be enforced with a new and important tool, the first-ever
human rights convention for persons with disabilities.
Organisation: Pambazuka News
Resource type: Journal article.
Author: Lina Lindblom
* Lina Lindblom, communications officer at the Secretariat
of the African Decade of Persons with Disabilities.* Please send
comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
Notes:
[1] The pilot countries are Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda
and Senegal.
[2] Some African countries, e.g. Mali, Mauritania, Guinea Bissau
and the DRC, have also set up their own Decade Steering Committees
outside of the Secretariat’s programme.
For more information, see:
http://www.un.org/News/
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/enable/rights/ahc8.htm
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