adminHowever, discrimination is worse for Persons Living with Disabilities, particularly children.
Yet, their vulnerability is greatest, deserved of greater protection and support from society and Government. Although there are no reliable disability data in Zimbabwe, people living with disabilities will be first in the line of fire when climate change strikes and yet last in the line of social and humanitarian assistance.
Of the 6,4 million children in Zimbabwe, at least 600 000 or 10 percent live with a disability of one kind or another, according to 2011 estimates from the UN Children’s Fund. That’s one in every 10 children is at risk of diminished access to everything that matters to their livelihood – education, affordable healthcare, food and water.
These groups are already living on the fringes of society, violently stigmatised, abused and almost excluded from access to key other social amenities.
Retired Brigadier Felix Muchemwa, Special Advisor on Disability to President Mugabe, told a media round- table on disability in Harare last week that the Economic Structural
Adjustment Programme of the early 1990s crippled social disability grants and works in the country.
In 1992, he said, children were shockingly taken over by volunteers without Government support.
A survey in 2009 revealed there was no Government assistance for dis-abled children in schools except that offered by voluntary groups.
“Disability in Zimbabwe is not sufficiently quantified, which makes help to those affected a real problem,” Brigadier Muchemwa said. “Some parents actually hid their children at home because they were too embarrassed to bring them into the open.”
Multiplied Risk
In rural areas, 100 percent of Children Living with Disabilities, especially those using wheelchairs, face significantly reduced access to proper sanitation or are completely excluded from educational facilities.
The reason for that is the incompatibility of the Blair toilet, the dominant sanitary facility in remote rural Zimbabwe, says Mr Farai Mukuta, executive director, National Association of Societies for the Care of the Handicapped.
“The Blair was not made for CWDs,” he charged. “It’s architecture excludes use by these groups, and that also means exclusion from education.” Nationally, over 52 percent of CWDs are out of school or have never been there.
In terms of sanitation, only 33 percent of people in rural areas have access to it and between 40 to 60 percent have no access to safe, clean drinking water, according to 2010 statistics from the Water Ministry.
By 2025, water stress will worsen. Over 50 percent of the world’s 7 billion people are expected to experience significantly reduced access to reliable clean drinking water due to climate change.
Now, as it is, these conditions are already overly taxing for the able-bodied. What more for people living with disabilities, particularly CWDs, already grappling with deep levels of structured poverty, very low or no income, low or no adaptive capacity and widespread social exclusion?
The risk of exposure to climate- related infectious diseases (such as malaria or diarrhoea) for PWDs is multiplied, whereas access to medication or other mitigatory systems remain out of reach.
In 2008, unreliable water supplies gave birth to a record cholera outbreak that killed nearly 4 000 people and affected over 100 000.
People living with disabilities in rural or urban areas will find it difficult to fetch water say from wells or boreholes pumped by hand, leaving them exposed to unreliable potentially infected sources.
Due to increased marginalisation, people living with disabilities are likely to emerge far worse from the threat of food shortages, loss and damage arising from the impacts of climate change.
A key 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecasts that agriculture output in Zimbabwe will decline by up to 50 percent by 2020, threatening food security, due to reduced precipitation, droughts and floods -all climate change manifestations.
Emergency scenarios such as climate-induced floods or droughts present the most challenging situations for people living with disabilities.
Impacts in rural or urban areas vary, but people with disabilities risk neglect or loss of family assistance.
A person on wheelchair will find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to escape or manoeuvre flooded homes without additional help from elsewhere or someone.
Mr Mukuta said people living with disabilities are mostly excluded from social assistance programmes, such as the provision of food and healthcare by Government in times of drought or other disasters, yet there was direct assistance to other vulnerable groups such as widows, orphans or people living with HIV/Aids.
“Government should dialogue and dialogue with representatives of PWDs and those disabled to hear their voice, what actually concerns them. From there, we can craft suitable and relevant policies,” he said.
Humanitarian response
The Government of Zimbabwe, which is party to the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, budgets for a variety of social programmes.
Some people even receive disability allowances of US$20 or more each month. But such grants remain a pittance and do not compare with the high costs of living that most PWDs face daily. Social budgets here are not a priority, which they ought to be. More must be done.
The bulk of the tenets of the Convention, which commits the Government to provide equal support and protection to people living with disabilities as those for able-bodied persons, are far from being satisfied.
“Disability-inclusive humanitarian response ensures that children and adults with disabilities, as well as their families, survive and live with dignity, even as it benefits the population,” said a Unicef report, “The State of the World’s Children 2013”, released last week.
“This approach calls for holistic and inclusive programmes, rather than just isolated projects and policies targeting disabilities.”
Key humanitarian intervention areas include improving evidence-based responses, mainstreaming humanitarian services accessible for those with disabilities, designing specialised services and “ensuring that recovery and reintegration proceed in environments that foster well-being, health, self-respect and dignity.”
Writing in the same report and highlighting the cause for CWDs, Maria Kent of the University College of London said: “As a starting point, children with disabilities should be given the opportunity to take part in the planning and implementation of disaster risk reduction and peace-building strategies as well as recovery processes.
“Also needed is a unified approach to data collection. Collaboration with local and national disabled people’s organisations should be emphasised, and these groups’ capacity to address issues specific to children should be built up, where necessary.”
Disability-specific responses are critical, she said. In 2004, during the tsunami, an Indian with a disability received five wheelchair donations “but no one asked her if she needed food or clothes”.
God is faithful.
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