disABILITY FOCUS

Having discussed last week some of the challenges that persons with disabilities face when it comes to accessing information affecting their lives, it is important to explore this week some of the interventions we can make to ensure that they are able to enjoy their right to information. Whether we are Government, policy makers, rights advocates, chiefs, or just ordinary citizens, there are surely certain things that can be done. Government, which is probably the principal duty bearer, has obviously the biggest role to play, especially in creating a conducive policy and legislative environment to enhance both protection and participation of persons with disabilities in social life. For example, besides enacting the long-awaited Disability Bill, Government, Parliamentarians and policy makers, must also undertake to ensure that the needs of persons with disabilities are addressed in another long-awaited draft piece of legislation, the Access to Information Bill, before it is enacted

Although there are no specific provisions protecting rights ofpersons with disabilities in the Republican Constitution of Malawi, these are protected by other provisions nevertheless. The provision on equality in Section 20, for instance, demands that there shall be no discrimination on any grounds including disability. In Section 13(g) of the Constitution, the state makes a commitment to support the disabled through (a) greater access to public places, (b) fair opportunities in employment and (c) the fullest possible participation in all spheres of Malawian society. The 1998 Population and Housing Census conducted by National Statistics Office (NSO) revealed that the country’s total population with disabilities is 4.2 percent.   It further revealed that 54 percent are males while females make up 46 percent.   The rural-urban distribution of the disabled population is 3 percent for rural areas and 2 percent for urban.   The disability population was distributed as follows: 18.2 per

According to a handbook for Parliamentarians on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities entitled “From Exclusion to Equality: Realizing the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,” over 650 million persons around the world live with disabilities. Add to that their extended families, and a staggering two billion people daily live with disabilities. The handbook – developed by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) – further says Persons with disabilities make up the world’s largest and most disadvantaged minority. The numbers are damning: an estimated 20 percent of the world’s poorest persons are those with disabilities; 98 percent of children with disabilities in developing countries do not attend school; an estimated 30 percent of the world’s street children live with disabilities; and the literacy rate for adults with disabilities is