A Voice For the Voiceless
The Advocacy Project helps marginalized communities to tell their story, claim their rights and produce social change.
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Disability 'being ignored' as Reconstruction Begins, Warn Gulu Advocates
June 5, 2008: As Northern Uganda begins to rebuild from more than two decades of conflict, persons with disabilities risk being left out of the process, according to advocates for the disabled in Gulu.
In a series of meetings, the Survivor Corps mission was told that disabled people suffer from a lack of services, indifference from the authorities, discrimination from foreign agencies, poor housing and even abandonment by their spouses. Changing this, they said, calls for determined advocacy.
The government has launched a Peace Recovery and Development Plan, with support from the governments of the US, Britain, Netherlands, and Belgium. USAID launched a new program – Supporting Reconciliation in Northern Uganda (SPRING) in 2007.
But Perry Jawoko, the Gulu District Rehabilitation Officer, told Survivor Corps mission that most agencies do not see disabled survivors as a priority. There are few, if any, programs that address the needs of the disabled.
This concern was echoed by the Gulu Disabled Persons Union, a network of survivor groups in Northern Uganda which seeks to empower disabled conflict survivors. The Association was established in 1980 to respond to the Ugandan-Tanzanian war and has expanded into an umbrella advocacy group for people with disabilities.
The war in the north has left a terrible legacy of human and emotional damage. At least 800 people have been disabled by landmines, severed limbs, gunshot wounds and other acts of violence. Advocates also report a dramatic increase in cases of spinal injury, poor mental health, epilepsy and paralysis, particularly in the north.
According to the Spinal Injury Association, some of these cases are caused by accidents, but a growing number of spinal injuries are reportedly caused by tuberculosis among Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in over-crowded camps.
Ms. Jawoko said that only three foreign NGOs have projects for the disabled, and that even they focus almost exclusively on landmine survivors. Disabled people are also being left behind when large refugee camps are dismantled and smaller camps constructed. When they are included, the shelter provided inadequate.
The Gulu association was one of the first to join the Survivor Corps’ new Africa initiative, and its members plan to campaign vigorously for disability rights to be integrated into reconstruction plans. They will draw on the Persons with Disabilities Act, a new law that requires buildings to be handicap-accessible but has not been tested by advocates.
The association hopes to dispel the myth that disabled people “had it coming” and eradicate the stigma. Disabled conflict survivors are unpopular with the general public and even viewed as “cursed.”
The association also aims to encourage participation by local civic organizations, although Ms Jawoko warned that past efforts by NGOs to build up local initiatives were not sustained because they did not involve the district office and appeared to be imposed from above.