A voice for disability in Uganda
25 October 2007
Related page:
Uganda country profile
 Image courtesy of Esther Nisima Kyozira/NUDIPU
For many years in Uganda, the rights of disabled people have been sidelined.
Having a disability has often meant missing out on the quality healthcare and
educational and career opportunities that, in a just society, should be open to
all.
However, in 1987 a major step forward came with the formation of the National
Union of Disabled Persons in Uganda (NUDIPU). Under the slogan “Nothing for us
without us”, and aiming to provide a loud and clear voice for the disabled,
NUDIPU has fought to change perceptions and for fairer treatment for a group
that includes over 900,000 Ugandans. DFID is currently supporting a three-year NUDIPU campaign to make the country's people and lawmakers pay more attention to
disabled rights.
Spreading the message and pressing for change
Raising awareness is central to NUDIPU's work. Press conferences and TV talk
shows provide good platforms to get its message across about the problems
faced by disabled Ugandans. The number of callers the talk shows
have attracted, and the fact that more media organisations are now reporting on
disability, are signs that public interest in this issue has increased
significantly, and that the NUDIPU approach gets results.
But NUDIPU's biggest results have been in education. Thanks to its efforts
over ten years in pressing the Government for change, the Ugandan Constitution
now formally recognises that all people have the right to an education. And
schools have taken notice too, with new buildings being designed to be more
accessible, staff receiving training in special needs teaching, and the recently
created Special Needs Education Department supplying Braille materials. Blind
and partially sighted learners have also benefited from the incorporation of
sign language into the Constitution as an official language, and its acceptance
by schools as a teaching language.
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Disabled people in charge of their own futures
 Image courtesy of Esther Nisima Kyozira/NUDIPU
NUDIPU is also working hard for disabled people to access loans and other
financial services, lobbying
microfinance institutions to introduce extra
provisions for these groups. This energetic campaigning is helping people and
institutions throughout Uganda to see that disability needn't make a person an
object of charity, incapable of directing his or her own future and dependent on
others for survival.
Margaret Gune, a well-known politician from Eastern Uganda, sums up the NUDIPU philosophy:
“I was determined as a
child to succeed in spite of my disability. I am now a community leader and
politician defending the rights of both the disabled and able-bodied. Disability
to me is a state of mind that can be overcome.”
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Keeping up the fight for equal rights
With representation across the country,
NUDIPU is one of Uganda's better established civil society organisations. But
although it has made some important gains during its history, it still has far
to go to achieve its mission. For example, while lobbying is proving effective
at the national level, more needs to be done at the district and sub-county
levels (where much government and NGO poverty reduction work is currently
focussed) to make disabled people's interests heard. It is also crucial that the
Government makes funding available for local activities.
Bringing about equality for Uganda's disabled population will involve
overturning some long-standing attitudes and behaviours. Those responsible for
making and implementing policy need to take a more positive attitude towards
disability, while public ignorance of key rights issues still needs to be
tackled. In addition, disabled people suffer from:
- Rampant poverty and illiteracy;
- Lack of access to information and the physical environment;
- Lack of assertiveness;
- Weak human rights campaigning by organisations working on their
behalf.
DFID funding so far
has given NUDIPU the chance to promote disabled rights to create change -
raising awareness among government officials, lobbying members of parliament,
making use of national and international laws, targeting the policy-making
process, and
producing seminars and publications. But if Uganda's disabled are to enjoy
better education and financial services, improved healthcare, more employment
opportunities and wider access to land and water, there is a need to deliver
more changes, across Ugandan society, in the years ahead.
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Key facts
- DFID’s support to NUDIPU’s three-year (July 2006- February 2009)
human rights advocacy programme is worth £145,000.
- NUDIPU has district union affiliates in 56 districts of Uganda.
- There are councillors representing persons with disability at all
local government councils across the country.
- Five members of parliament now represent people with disabilities in
the National Legislative Assembly.
- According to the Population and Housing Census 2002, 3.5% of
Uganda’s population have a disability.
- Uganda has been involved in the establishment of an Occupational
Therapy School in Kampala from 1999 to 2002 and supporting community
based rehabilitation through the Disability Desk in the
 Ministry of
Health.
- Several Acts of Parliament, such as the Local Government Act 1997
and amended Act 2001, Land Act 1998, Traffic and Road Safety Act
1998 and Tertiary and other Universities Act 2000, have disability
friendly articles and clauses.
- NUDIPU collaborates with organizations including
Epilepsy Support
Association Uganda (ESAU), Mental Health Uganda (MHU),
Uganda National
Action on Physical Disability (UNAPD), Uganda Parents Association of
Children with Learning Disabilities (UPACLED),
Uganda Society for
Disabled Children (USDC),
Action on Disability and Development (ADD) and
Disabled Women Organization and Resource Network (DWNRO).
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