HUMAN RIGHTS-AFRICA: Media Highlight Plight Of the Disabled

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Mar 26 1998 (IPS) - Africa’s disabled people generally hit the news only when there is something sensational to write or say about them, but now plans are under way to bring them into the limelight on a more sustained basis.

Starting in April, the London-based ‘Index On Censorship’ — a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that promotes freedom of expression worldwide — in association with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) will broadcast radio programmes, distribute literature, and hold workshops to raise the profile of disability as a human rights issue in sub-Saharan Africa.

“Disability is a vital issue, one which touches many peoples lives,” says Caroline Thomson, deputy managing director of the BBC World Service. “By using radio, which is a powerful means of communication, especially in Africa, we are able to reach many more people and give them the information they need to improve their lives and the lives of their friends and family.”

The project, to be known as the “Worlds Of Difference”, comprises 50 programmes. Snapshots, a series of short cameo diaries from all parts of Africa will be broadcast. Scattered over a week’s programming, the diaries will be followed at the weekend by a half-hour montage of highlights and a special phone-in programme giving listeners the opportunity to put their questions direct to a panel of experts.

The project will also feature well-known Malian singer Salif Keita, who will talk on the problems of albinism.

“Keita will talk of people like himself who suffer from albinism in the French language series,” says Thomson. “Keita is involved with an organisation which fights for their rights, and has heard of cases in his native Mali where albinos have been sacrificed and others killed at birth, but those practices are on the way out.”

The treatment given to the disabled, whose number in Africa is usually estimated at 50 million, varies from country to country.

In the DRC, where a mafia of disabled persons extorts money from shopkeepers in the capital Kinshasa, the handicapped are left to fend for themselves, but in Uganda, a community-based rehabilitation programme has been established to help disabled persons.

But generally, they tend to be neglected in Africa. In Tanzania, for example, the government gives around one million U.S. dollars a month to the country’s opposition parties, but only 200 dollars to the biggest organisation of disabled people.

In Somalia, many people are injured by landmines and, once disabled, they are looked upon as a spent force. As a result, Somalis with disablities have no choice but to help themselves.

Landmines also proliferate in Angola and Mozambique and an international campaign has focused attention on those who have lost limbs as a result of the conflict that affected both countries between the 1970s and the 1990s.

The Red Cross, which is campaigning for a worldwide ban on the production, stockpiling, transfer and use of all anti-personnel mines, says the most severely affected areas in Africa are Angola (15 million mines), Mozambique (3 million), Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan (1 million each).

Angola has the highest rate of amputees in the world: one per 334 inhabitants. About 1.5 percent of the population has been injured in incidents involving mines or unexpected arms devices, according to the Red Cross.

Index on Censorship and the BBC say disability issues are tackled differently in West Africa, where the majority of people are Moslems. “Giving alms is one of the tenets of Islam and beggars proliferate in Hausaland (Nigeria),” says Thomson, “but this generosity makes disabled people unproductive. Does the concept of charity need redefinition?”

The BBC claims to have over 30 million listeners in sub-Saharan Africa and to reach them, it has set up 38 FM relays in 19 countries around the continent.

“It is no longer enough for the BBC to broadcast on shortwave alone; we have to be more accessible to our audience, more relevant and more aware of our listeners needs,” Sam Younger, BBC managing director, told journalists here on Mar 24.

“Today’s launch (in Nairobi, Kenya of a BBC FM relay station) is one link in a chain which I hope will eventually see the BBC on FM in all major centres throughout Africa.”