Open Society Initiative of Southern Africa (OSISA)

In May this year, I was one of six people who spent two days at the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria interviewing shortlisted candidates in order to select the ten who would be sponsored to undertake a Master’s degree in disability rights law.

The applicants came from Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Ghana and Mozambique and had undergone a vigorous shortlisting process that reduced their number from 45 to 18. The interviews reduced the numbers to the final ten people– who will form Africa’s first ever pool of graduates specialising in disability rights.

People with hearing impairments in Malawi bemoan the failure to include the use of sign language on state-owned TV. People with visual impairments complain that the bank notes, which Malawi has recently introduced, do not have features to enable them distinguish and identify the different denominations.

And the list goes on. The simple fact is that disabled people are among the most vulnerable, disadvantaged and marginalised people in Malawi – excluded from the enjoyment of their rights despite the Constitution guaranteeing human rights to all people without discrimination.

This study is a companion to the status of disability rights in southern Africa report and provides more detailed information on each of the nine countries included in the study. Together they paint a vivid and depressing picture of the marginalisation of disabled people, the huge challenges faced by disabled peoples’ organisations (DPOs) and the lack of any focus on disability rights by governments across the region – from Angola to Mozambique to Zimbabwe.