Disabled rights: Awareness key to change

US consulate hosts session on disabled rights movement in Pakistan and US.

LAHORE:

The government’s inability to implement legislation and general ignorance about the rights of the disabled are the major hurdles to making them a fuller part of society, said experts at an event arranged by the US consulate on Wednesday.

Speakers from Pakistan as well as via audio-video link from Chicago, one of Lahore’s sister cities, spoke about the disability rights movement in Pakistan and what lessons it could learn from the movement in America.

Kamren Tamley, commissioner of the Chicago Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities since 2005 and a disabled person herself, said education and employment were major challenges for people with disabilities since they could not live independently without them. She said recent funding cuts by state governments in the United States had resulted in higher unemployment in the disabled community.

She said the first independent living centre was opened in California in 1972. It advocated for disabled rights and gave peer support and independent living skills to the community. Half the people who ran the centre were disabled themselves, and this centre became a model for the independent living movement.

Dr Tariq Butt, chairman of the Lahore-Chicago Sister Committee, said the disabled also need easy access to physicians.

He said in the US the disabled were offered in-house medical services along with independent living programmes.

Shafiqur Rehman, the director of local organisation Milestone, said the first independent living centre was opened in Pakistan in 2002. He said there was greater awareness in Pakistan today about the disabled because of media exposure, but there was still a long way to go.

He said the current situation for disabled people here was similar to what the US faced in the 1970s.

He said the key change needed was a change in mindset, and this could be achieved through awareness programmes targeting disabled as well as able-bodied people.

Atif Sheikh, director of the Special Talent Exchange Programme (STEP), another local group, said disability awareness programmes in Pakistan had been hindered by many factors.

For one, the government had yet to define the term ‘disability’, while it had failed to implement laws on disabled rights.

He said there was a lot of ignorance about the disabled among the general population.

“Disabled people are either portrayed as saints or people who have been punished for their sins in the form of a disability,” he said. He said disabled people should not be considered objects of pity, or deserving of any added ‘special attention’.

Joseph Russo, another official at the Chicago Mayor’s Office and a disabled lawyer, said the implementation of laws relating to disabled people had faced similar challenges in the US and the problem was overcome though awareness campaigns.



Published in The Express Tribune, September 8^th, 2011.