Sunday, August 5, 2012

Disability Rights Movement in Africa!

This week in the office, we had an exciting group of visitors from Ethiopia with us. The delegation were founders of a non-profit to aid individuals with disabilities, as will as wounded veterans--much like the organizations we have here in the States. The US State Dept had sponsored their visit in an effort to assist the non-profit in working with the Ethiopian government, which apparently is a little wary of non--profit organizations.

A month or so ago at the USICD Annual Conference (which I was lucky enough to attend, thanks to my lovely Mentor), there was a delegate from Uganda present. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that there is a very strong disability rights movement in that part of Africa. There are even designated positions in the Ugandan parliament for legislators with disabilities to ensure that those specific issues are fairly represented.  I am extremely interested in African human rights movements, and I hope to focus on writing about humanitarian efforts in Africa at some point in my career.

If you'd like, check out the new edition of Life in Action at unitedspinal.org under "Publications." It's a very interesting issue that is focused on leading disability advocates and important issues that are being addressed by our community this year. These issues include the fight for accessible gas station pumps (which is a huge barrier to independent driving--bigger than actually getting the accessible car!) and the CRPD. Best of all, Life in Action is free to view in its entirety online :)

Happy weekend--Liz H.

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