WUNRN
UN
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
Uganda |
Signature:
30 Mar 2007 |
Formal
Ratification: 25 Sept 2008 |
__________________________________________________________________________
UGANDA
- DISABLED WOMEN - MULTIPLE DISCRIMINATIONS
By Evelyn Matsamura Kiapi
KAMPALA, Mar 25, 2010 (IPS) - They endure stigma,
discrimination, violence and extreme poverty, but Ugandan women living with disabilities
say the greatest challenge facing them centres on their reproductive health.
"In addition to the impacts of physical, mental,
intellectual and sensor impairments, we are double discriminated (against),
first as women, and then as disabled," said Beatrice Guzu, executive
secretary of the National Organisation of Women with Disabilities in Uganda.
According to Guzu, while women's empowerment and gender
equality strategies emphasise the importance of addressing discrimination
against women, such strategies do not target women with disabilities.
Law offers little protection
Uganda has a disability policy and planning framework –
including the People with Disabilities Act. The country is also signatory to
the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which calls for
protection of the rights of people living with disabilities. And this is also
emphasised in the Uganda Constitution. But there are no deliberate efforts to
incorporate reproductive health services into such legislation.
Because of this, there are no adequate sanitation facilities
or even a single health centre in the country that has disability-friendly
delivery beds for expectant mothers with disabilities.
The beds are too high and non adjustable to offer support
surface for labour and delivery, yet by the nature of some disabilities,
expectant women may need caesarean section births, says Guzu.
"The maternity sanitation is very poor, yet this is a
(physically impaired) woman who may need to crawl into the bathroom. So such an
environment can discourage her from using health centres and instead she
decides to deliver at home with the traditional birth attendant," Guzu
says.
Midwives have also not been sensitised enough on how to
handle expectant mothers with disabilities, she says.
However, midwives say they also face their own share of
challenges while dealing with women with disabilities, varying on the nature of
disability.
"For women with physical disability, there is a
challenge of movement and a challenge in the delivery facility like appropriate
beds," says Janet Obuni President, Uganda National Association of Nurses
and Midwives.
She says lack of special delivery beds equally affects the
midwife’s health because she has to bend or squat on the floor to deliver the
child, causing physical problems and discomfort to her.
"Most of our hospitals have not taken people with
disabilities into account. We do not have ramps for those on wheel chairs or
for moving patients from one place to another; we also do not have toilet
facilities specific for them and that is a very big challenge for the
midwife," Obuni tells IPS.
Midwives also face a challenge of communicating with women
with disabilities, especially those who are visually impaired and deaf.
"This is because we do not have the training to enable
us pass information to these mothers on how they should take care of themselves
during pregnancy, and giving them the vital health information during antenatal
clinics on how to take care of their babies and themselves after
delivering," Obuni says.
She proposes a need not only to train health workers –
particularly midwives - on how to communicate with women with disabilities but
to also educate mothers with disabilities on how to access reproductive health
services.
"We need to create awareness among the population that
every mother has a right to access quality and skilled reproductive health
services," Obuni says.
Sexual violence
But reproductive health rights of women with disabilities are not violated
only during child birth. Sexual exploitation is another problem which
subsequently leads to unwanted pregnancy and complications during child birth.
It also increases their chances of acquiring sexually transmitted infections
including HIV/AIDS, health experts say.
"Women with disabilities are vulnerable to sexual violence because many in
society believe that they are asexual and thus are free from HIV/AIDS,"
State of Uganda’s Population report 2008 says.
Moreover, the report says, these women are also often left out of reproductive
health sensitisation and awareness programmes because the providers also
consider them asexual. Consequently, girls with disabilities suffer from
sexually transmitted infections without access to counselling and treatment
because they are always kept at home.
"They (girls) are easily taken advantage of because of their (disability)
status. Taking care of them is hard and most parents ignore them when they are
sick," says ‘Rapid Sexual and Reproductive Health Assessment in Northern
Uganda’ a 2006 study by United Nations Population Fund.
Government insists that its national programmes are all-inclusive. "Our
national policy on disability emphasises inclusiveness of all types of
disabilities. We are looking at non-discrimination, and as a result we also
develop programmes which are gender sensitive rather than disability
sensitive," says Herbert Baryayebwa, Commissioner for the Elderly and
Disable in the ministry of labour, gender and social development.
However, people with disabilities say, in spite of these ‘all-inclusive’
frameworks, they are still being marginalised, not only in national development
programmes but even at the international level like the Millennium Development
Goals which have no mention of people living with disabilities in any of its
targets.
"At the moment, not much is really being done in integrating people living
with disabilities in the development process," Guzu says.
The situation above is aggravated by lack of national disability statistics.
For instance, the national Human Development Report and Millennium Development
Goals progress reports have no mention of people with disabilities, hindering
government’s capacity to come up with development programmes for this
vulnerable group who constitute 18 percent of Uganda’s 30 million people,
according to June 2008 figures from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics.
================================================================
To contact the list administrator, or to leave the list, send an email to:
wunrn_listserve-request@lists.wunrn.com. Thank you.