WUNRN
International Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities:
International Campaign to Ban
Landmines: http://www.icbl.org/intro.php
___________________________________________________________________
They are talking about national victim-assistance plans,
including how landmine survivors are involved in designing, carrying out and
monitoring such work.They are talking about issues that affect women like me.
Many of us women with
disabilities have been left out of this important conversation over the past
decade, just as we have been left out of development programs and shunned in
our own communities. Policymakers must take our needs into account so we can share
in the benefits of any programming they devise.
Women with disabilities are too often isolated in their
communities, ignored by relief and recovery efforts and victimized by sexual
violence. Abuse and abandonment are common, and a lack of access to health
care, education and employment opportunities are the reality for most. Even in
relationships, there is often shame and fear. It is not uncommon for men to
come at night and leave in the morning, unwilling to be seen with a disabled
partner.
I know all this from my own personal experience that
began one night in 1996, when rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army came into
Onyama, my village in northern
Thundering Sound, Then Darkness
They burned and looted my neighbors' homes. I saw the
destruction the next morning as I went to fetch water and buy food at the
market, carrying my son on my back. On my way home, I saw a man coming on his
bicycle so I moved to the side of the road.
I heard a thundering sound and saw darkness all around
me. I spent three months in the hospital--and lost my leg and my son. I had
stepped on a landmine and the world as I knew it had come to a halting end.
I returned to live with my husband, but everything had changed.
He verbally abused me, telling me I was useless, helpless. My in-laws told him,
"Monica is disabled; get another woman."
After a year, my husband left. I was four months pregnant
at the time and struggling to care for my older child as well.
I was ashamed of my disability. I was afraid of what
people would say. I isolated myself. It was my children who encouraged me, who
stopped me from thoughts of suicide. What would happen to my children if I
died? When I cried, they wanted to cry, so I would stop and console them.
I decided to join the local association of landmine
survivors and there I found hope, friendship and courage. I slowly rebuilt my
life. I now have a small business, selling fish in the local market, and am the
leader of a landmine survivor organization in northern
Facing Many Barriers
Thousands of women with disabilities in northern
Over half of the world, including Uganda, has ratified
the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and more than 150
countries have signed up to the Mine Ban Treaty. These are important
commitments made by governments, but how do they help women like me in our
daily lives?
If women with disabilities really count, we need to be
counted or we will continue to be in the shadows. In
I hope that the U.N., humanitarian actors and others who
work in conflict situations will shed light on the barriers facing women with
disabilities, listen to what we have to say and work with us to do something
about it.