Social inclusion: An NGO advocates for the autonomy of disabled women

As part of the “Voice of Women” project, the NGO “Humanity and Inclusion” and its partners are mobilizing civil society to demand the active participation of women and girls with disabilities in decision-making bodies and public policies.

The NGO “Humanity and Inclusion” organized, yesterday, a multi-actor advocacy session bringing together feminist organizations, human rights organizations and members of civil society. The objective is to take up the fight against the low presence of people with disabilities, especially women and girls, in public programs and policies, as well as in decision-making bodies.

The meeting is part of the “Voice of Women” project, implemented in Senegal, Togo and Benin by “Humanité et Inclusion”. On this occasion, Françoise Gabriella Mballa, project manager at “Humanity and Inclusion”, indicated that progress has been noted in the management of disability in Senegal, but that there is still work to be done.

According to her, girls and women are still deprived of some of their rights. These vulnerable groups face the problem of accessibility to basic social services, elective positions, decision-making bodies, funding and citizen and political participation. Added to this is the gender-based violence of which many girls and women with disabilities are victims. In the same vein, participants called for the ratification of the African Protocol on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as well as the revision of the social orientation law.

“Women and girls with disabilities should not just be beneficiaries of policies and programs. They must be able to participate in their design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation,” said Isseu Gaye, president of the Women’s Committee of the Senegalese Federation of Associations of Disabled People.

The advisor to the President of the Republic in charge of disability, Cheikh Saad Bou Diouf, shares this opinion. According to him, the time has come to definitively move from an approach based on assistance to one based on rights, equality, autonomy and full participation. “A disabled woman is not only a person to be protected, and disability should never be a sentence to invisibility,” he said.

Pope Coly NGOME