In southern Africa, there is lack of awareness about disability issues, and inadequate implementation of disability policies, amongst lawyers. None of the region’s universities offer courses with a focus on disability rights and anti-discrimination law.
The first phase of the disability rights and law school project, carried out by OSISA’s Law Programme, produced a report, based on nine southern African countries, that found “...no...‘stand alone’ courses on disability rights” in the region.
As such, four senior lecturers from universities in the region were selected to complete their masters, through the LLM Human Rights programme at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Human Rights (CHR), with a special focus on disability rights.
After graduation in December 2011, the lecturers from Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe begin implementing the disability rights course at their respective institutions. This core grant provides support to the universities to implement a these courses for a year, conduct outreach activities and, in two instances, establish legal clinics specialising in disability rights.
This grant also provides for the University of Pretoria’s CHR to coordinate, support and monitor the work of these universities.
The overall goal of this project is to develop a pool of southern African students, with specialised skills and knowledge in disability rights law. It also seeks to train a series of southern African law lecturers who will champion disability rights work at the tertiary education level.
Finally, it is hoped that regional, and continental, policy changes to disability rights, and anti-discrimination practices, will be facilitated through knowledge, skills and ideas shared between universities.
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