JUBA — Persons with disabilities in South Sudan said they are enduring several challenges, such as discrimination when competing for scholarships with their able peers in the country.
Many individuals with disabilities celebrated when South Sudan adopted the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on February 24, 2023.
However, the happiness was fleeting, as many people with disabilities faced new obstacles.
Daila Martinez, who is visually impaired, claimed that young people with disabilities encounter numerous challenges in their lives, including a lack of education, scholarship opportunities, access to information, and discrimination.
“First, lack of access to education, because our communities have a negative perception of a person with a disability, he or she is not supposed to be at home, being hidden inside their homes, without being given the freedom to come out and express themselves,” Martinez told Sudan’s Post on Friday.
Martinez said people with special needs face discrimination in education.
“We are harming the future of this country by focusing so much on discrimination; just because someone is blind or crippled does not mean they can’t deliver or contribute to their community,” she said.
She called for inclusive education for people living with disabilities.
“What we see now, especially in South Sudan, is that girls with disabilities are not being trained at school because they think that a girl with a disability doesn’t have the right to go to school,” she lamented.
Martinez stated that families keep disabled girls at home with the hope that they will marry and go to their own home or that their husband will stay with her at her father’s house, which is incorrect.
“Because a girl with a disability has a right to go to school. A girl with a disability, after she gets her degree or finishes her school, has a right to work, and she has a right also to get her husband, and she has a right to be at her own home, instead of living with her parents, with the same husband,” she fumed.
She encouraged the Ministry of Education to offer scholarship opportunities to those who are visually impaired.
“Sometimes we do hear there are scholarships everywhere, but I did not see the participation of young people with disabilities to participate in this scholarship, whereby they go outside and also make themselves who they want to be in the future,” she said.
“Ministry of General Education and Instruction, let them see into this case, because a person with a disability and a person without a disability are all the same. Let them not be in discrimination.”
She stressed that the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities should be implemented, saying ‘not just as ink on paper’ or a ‘law book on a shelf in government dockets.’
Margaret Paul, who has a hearing impediment, described how she struggles at school due to a lack of sign language interpreters, making it difficult for her to grasp the lessons.
“When the teacher is teaching, those who are hearing can get all the information, but for me, I cannot get any information because there is no interpreter there. I just copy what the teacher puts on the blackboard,” Paul said.
According to her, even interacting with doctors at the hospital is difficult, which can occasionally result in the prescription of correct medication.
“So sometimes I will be given the wrong medication because I don’t want to tell the doctor my real sickness. This is what I am getting.”
Paul urged the community and the government to address the needs of those with disabilities.
“So, if the government and community will plan for the special activities of inclusion, it will always help us a lot. Even now, our education is limited. Sometimes just from school you will struggle after you go to senior, but from there you will drop out of school because you have no interpreters in, for example, high-level education.”
Awut Deng Achuil, former Minister of General Education and Instruction, promised to join hands with the people with disabilities to ensure they have access to quality education.
On 24 February 2023, South Sudan took a historic step forward for disability inclusion by signing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
For instance, Article 3 of the CRPD covers the general principles, that is, the principles that apply to all the rights of people with disabilities. These include:
