Action-research to foster the rights od persons with disability in Mozambique

Title INCLU.DE – Inclusion for Development Lotto 1

Location Mozambico

Duration: 3 anni

Project leader AIFO

Partners FAMOD – Forum da Associações Moçambicanas de Pessoas com Deficiência, CNHD – Comissão Nacional do Deritos Humanos, RIDS – Rete Italiana Disabilità

Funding Agenzia Italiana per la Cooperazione allo Sviluppo AICS

 

Context

In 2012, the Mozambican government ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCPRD), committing itself to implementing its provisions. The pursuit of full and effective inclusion of persons with disabilities in Mozambique is a very important issue, it has even been included in the country’s Constitution in Articles 37 and 125. The roots of this centrality can be traced back to two main reasons. The first concerns a virtuous path of inclusion that generates positive dynamics for the country’s socio-economic and political development. The second concerns the country’s history and the bloody civil war that took place between 1977 and the signing of the peace agreements in Rome in 1992.

As a result of the civil war, a large number of mines are scattered throughout the country and, although there are no official figures on the number of people affected by these mines, reliable estimates put the human loss rate at between 8.1 and 16.7 per 1,000, depending on the province. The estimates date back to 1995, and the demining process has continued in the following decades; therefore, it is likely that the total number of victims and seriously injured people (in many cases with permanent disabilities) has increased significantly. This has meant that the issue of disability has become inextricably linked to the physical, economic and social reconstruction of the country.

The project INCLU.DE aims to improve the condition of men and women with disabilities through the effective implementation of the UNCPRD and the strengthening of the system that provides protection and promotes the rights of persons with disabilities based on institutional capacity building and awareness-raising activities at central and local level.

 

General Objective

The Inclusive Development Unit was involved in the project to provide technical and scientific support to the Comissão Nacional do Deritos Humanos. Together they work to outline a training programme and develop tools to improve data collection on UNCPRD areas of interest, identified through extensive consultation processes.
In parallel, the ARCO research group is working with public officiale to raise their awareness and transfer the necessary knowledge on the rights of persons with disabilities in order to improve the processes of collecting and disaggregating relevant data, to promote their comparability at national and international level.

 

Our contribution

During the first year of the project, the Inclusive Development Unit developed a manual for monitoring the rights of persons with disabilities, providing a comprehensive overview of the status of fulfilment of their rights, as codified in the UNCRPD in Mozambique. This tool includes indicators relating to international and human rights provisions, as well as tools for identifying, defining and measuring disability at the international level.
The monitoring document also includes an empirical exercise in monitoring the UNCRPD using data from the latest Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), including questions on functional difficulties from the Washington Group on Disability Statistics (WG).
Based on this work, Researchers developed a toolbox of instruments for identifying and measuring disability and an internal framework of indicators for monitoring the UNCRPD.

The applicability of these tools was tested at the local level by the ARCO researchers, thanks to a pilot data collection conducted in Maputo and Sofala together with CNDH technicians.
The aim of the activity was to evaluate the structure and use of the data collection tools so that they could then be handed over to the CNDH itself for subsequent monitoring activities.

At the institutional level, the Inclusive Development Unit provides technical and organisational support in conducting consultation processes with local institutions and Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs), setting up a Multisectoral Technical Group to initiate a process of ongoing dialogue between agencies and organisations working for the inclusion of persons with disabilities.

Photo credits: Enrico Nicosia 

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