Rights of people with disabilities
Individual Documents
Description:
"“We (Women with disabilities) experience double discrimination due to our gender and disability status. Without having access to information and services, we are more vulnerable to face different forms of violence both inside and outside of our homes,” Nwe Nwe Win, a local woman with physical disability said.
According to the 2019 Myanmar Inter-censal Survey, there is an estimated of 3.5 million females with disabilities compared to an estimated 2.5 million of males. Women with disabilities are 2 to 4 times more likely to experience intimate partner violence. They are more vulnerable to experience the situation such as withholding medication and assistive devices (such as wheelchairs, hearing aid and white canes, etc.), denial of assistance, food, water, and basic needs.
In conflict related situation, women and girls with disabilities are especially vulnerable. UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, with the support of local partner organizations of persons with disabilities , provides dignity kits which include basic needs for women and girls with disabilities from affected communities to ensure their personal hygiene and dignity.
“I had to flee my home when armed clashes happened near my village. I couldn’t bring anything from my personal belongings due to my physical disability?. Thanks to the items included in the kits such as basic clothing and sanitary napkins, I can live with dignity and manage my personal hygiene even in the situation of emergency.” Nyein Nyein, a local woman with disabilities from conflict affected area.
Sexual and reproductive health and gender-based violence information is important for women with disabilities at the displaced sites to minimize the risks they might have. Without access to the sexual and reproductive health services and information, they are at higher risk of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. Women with disabilities are up to 10 times more likely to experience sexual violence. It is important to provide information and services for persons with disabilities considering their specific needs based on major types of disabilities.
Sian Nuam, a local woman with physical disability said, “I didn’t notice that I was experiencing gender-based violence at home. Thanks to the assistive devices (wheelchair) to go out by myself without needing assistance from my family anymore and the opportunity to attend gender-based violence awareness and mental health and psychosocial support sessions provided by local OPD with the support of UNFPA, I feel empowered and understand my rights.”
Every person with disability has equal rights and choices as anyone else, as in global frameworks such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ICPD Programme of Action and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. To end discrimination and exclusion in our society, it is important that we leave no one behind.
Yu Myat Mun, Programme Analyst of UNFPA Myanmar said, “The integrated sexual and reproductive health, gender-based violence and mental health and psychosocial support services and information are lifesaving assets for the women and girls with disabilities especially who are at the conflict affected displaced sites, by safeguarding their dignity, and opportunity to practice their body rights with the informed choices.” UNFPA’s support also ensure the equal accessibility to the maternal and family planning services for the persons with disabilities promoting their sexual and reproductive rights as others.
Joshua, one of the leaders of local organization of persons with disabilities said, “The main barrier which women and girls with disabilities face in the society is not their disabilities, but, sadly, it is the discrimination of people from their communities. It hinders full and effective participation of women with disabilities in the communities. We must end this barrier - discrimination against persons with disabilities including women and girl and provide support to ensure their rights and dignity.”..."
Source/publisher:
United Nations Population Fund
Date of publication:
2023-03-31
Date of entry/update:
2023-03-31
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund), Rights of people with disabilities, Women's rights
Language:
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Sub-title:
Governments, UN Should Do More to End Abuses, Ensure Protection, Provide Assistance
Description:
"Older people are often at heightened risk of abuses during armed conflict, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. All parties to armed conflict should end abuses against older people and facilitate humanitarian assistance to older people in need. The United Nations Security Council should ensure that the UN addresses the need for enhanced protection of older civilians in armed conflict in its work.
The 49-page report, “No One Is Spared: Abuses against Older People in Armed Conflict,” describes patterns of abuses documented by Human Rights Watch between 2013 and 2021 against older people affected by armed conflicts in Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Mali, Mozambique, Nagorno-Karabakh, Niger, South Sudan, Syria, and Ukraine. The report also draws on the serious protracted violence in two English-speaking regions of Cameroon, Myanmar security force atrocities against older ethnic Rohingya in Rakhine State, and the experiences of older refugees in Lebanon displaced by conflict in Syria.
“Older people face serious abuses, including summary execution, rape, and abduction, during conflicts,” said Bridget Sleap, senior researcher on the rights of older people at Human Rights Watch. “There is an urgent need for governments and the UN to recognize the specific risks and assistance needs of older people and act to protect them.”
Government forces and non-state armed groups have attacked and committed serious abuses against older civilians in conflicts around the world, including unlawful killing, summary executions, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and other ill-treatment, rape, abduction and kidnapping, and destroyed their homes and property. Older civilians have been killed and injured by small arms, heavy weapons, explosive weapons with wide area effects, and chemical and other banned weapons. Older people are often at heightened risk when they are unable or chose not to flee attacks.
In Burkina Faso and Mali, armed Islamist groups, government forces, and ethnic militias have killed numerous older people, including prominent elders. On January 27, 2022, the Malian army executed two men in their 80s and 12 others in the village of Touna, Mali, in apparent retaliation for the death of two soldiers whose vehicle drove over an improvised explosive device.
In South Sudan, a rape survivor in her late 50s said that during government operations against rebel forces in February 2019, a soldier made her carry looted property, beat her with a gun, and raped her repeatedly.
Between December 2016 and April 2017, Syrian government warplanes carried out four aerial attacks with apparent nerve agents, a group of chemicals that includes sarin. Older people were among those who reportedly died in the attacks from chemical exposure.
During hostilities, in many instances older people with limited mobility or other disabilities did not have support from others to flee when fighting neared and had to remain behind. In 2017, Rohingya who were forced out of Myanmar described security forces pushing older people who could not flee back into burning houses. "I saw them push my husband's uncle into the fire. I saw them push him back into the burning house,” one woman said. “He is weak, maybe 80 years [old].... I think they wanted everyone to leave and those that could not leave they put into the fire.”
Other older people chose not to flee their homes because they wanted to protect their property. During the conflict in 2020 over Nagorno-Karabakh, the ethnic-Armenian majority enclave in Azerbaijan, most younger civilians fled. Those remaining, with few exceptions, were older people. An older woman and her husband, Arega and Eduard, both in their 70s, remained in their village to protect their property. In October, Azerbaijani soldiers found the couple at home and aggressively detained them, holding them initially in abandoned houses without food and water, then taking them to a detention facility in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku. Officials denied Arega medication for her high blood pressure. Eduard died in detention. When Arega viewed his body shortly after his death, she described his face as black and blue.
Displaced older people can also face abuse and barriers to obtaining humanitarian assistance. In South Sudan in 2017, a 70-year-old man who was blind said aid was inaccessible on the island to which he was displaced. “Some organizations have registered older people, but I never got registered because they did not come to this particular island,” he said. “There’s no health clinic either on the island. To get medical assistance, I must travel to another island or to the mainland.”
International humanitarian law, the laws of war, recognizes the protection of older civilians during armed conflict. It requires to the extent feasible the safe removal of older civilians, among others, from the vicinity of military targets, and the provision of suitable accommodations for detained civilians on the basis of age among other factors. Older people are also protected at all times by applicable international human rights law.
“UN agencies, peacekeeping missions, and humanitarian actors should ensure that all protection and assistance activities are inclusive of older people and their specific needs,” Sleap said. “Older people, with their unique protection needs, should no longer be invisible victims of armed conflict..."
Source/publisher:
"Human Rights Watch" (USA)
Date of publication:
2022-02-23
Date of entry/update:
2022-02-23
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Rights of people with disabilities, Human Rights and international relations, Discrimination against the Rohingya, Human Rights Watch Reports on Burma/Myanmar
Language:
Format :
pdf pdf
Size:
1.86 MB 1.13 MB
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Description:
"၁။ လူသားချင်းစာနာထောက်ထားရေးနှင့် ဘေးအန္တရာယ်ဆိုင်ရာ စီမံခန့်ခွဲရေးဝန်ကြီးဌာန၊ အမျိုးသား ညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရ အနေဖြင့် မသန်စွမ်းသူများကို လူ့အသိုက်အဝန်းအတွင်း အပြည့်အဝ ပါဝင် ဆောင်ရွက်ခွင့်၊ လူ့အခွင့်အရေးနှင့် အခြေခံ လွတ်လပ်ခွင့်များကို အများနည်းတူရရှိခံစားပိုင်ခွင့် ရရှိစေရေးအပြင် မသန်စွမ်းသူများ ကြုံတွေ့ခံစားနေရသော မညီမျှမှုများကို လျှော့ချနိုင်ရေးအတွက် သက်ဆိုင်ရာ မသန်စွမ်းခေါင်းဆောင်များနှင့် ပူးပေါင်း ဆောင်ရွက်လျက်ရှိပါသည်။
၂။ တော်လှန်ရေးကာလ၊ ကြားကာလအတွင်းတွင် မသန်စွမ်းသူများ၏ အခွင့်အရေးများကို ကာကွယ် စောင့်ရှောက် ပေးနိုင်ရန်အတွက် ရည်ရွယ်ဖွဲ့စည်းထားသော "မသန်စွမ်းသူများ ခွင့်တူညီမျှ ညှိနှိုင်းဆောင်ရွက်ရေး ကော်မတီ" (Myanmar Coordination Committee for Equal Rights of People with Disabilities – MCERP) နှင့် ညှိနှိုင်းဆွေးနွေးမှုများအရ မသန်စွမ်းသူများနှင့် ပတ်သက်သည့် အောက်ပါ လုပ်ငန်းစဥ်များကို လူသားချင်းစာနာ ထောက်ထားရေးနှင့် ဘေးအန္တရာယ်ဆိုင်ရာ စီမံခန့်ခွဲရေးဝန်ကြီးဌာန၊ အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရက အကောင်အထည် ဖော်ဆောင်ရန် ကတိပြုအပ်ပါသည် -
(က) တော်လှန်ရေးကာလ၊ ကြားကာလအုပ်ချုပ်စီမံမှုများ၊ နောင်ကာလ နိုင်ငံတော်သစ် ပေါ်ပေါက်ရေး အတွက် ညှိနှိုင်းပုံဖော် ဆောင်ရွက်မှု များတွင် မသန်စွမ်းသူများတန်းတူပါဝင်နိုင်စေရေး၊
(ခ) ပြည်သူလူထုနှင့် ဆက်သွယ်ဆောင်ရွက်မှုများတွင် မသန်စွမ်းသူများအား ချန်လှပ်ခြင်း ရှိမနေစေရန် စီစဉ် ဆောင်ရွက်ပေးရေး၊
(ဂ) တော်လှန်ရေးကာလ လူသားချင်းစာနာထောက်ထားမှုဆိုင်ရာ အရေးပေါ် ထောက်ပံ့ကူညီမှုများ၊ လူမှု ကာကွယ်စောင့်ရှောက်မှုများ၊ ပြန်လည်ထူထောင်ရေးစီစဉ်ဆောင်ရွက်မှုများတွင် မသန်စွမ်းသူများ တန်းတူပါဝင်ခံစားရရှိနိုင်စေရေး၊
(ဃ) လူသားချင်းစာနာမှုအစီအစဥ်တိုင်းတွင် မသန်စွမ်းသူများအား ကျန်ရစ်မနေစေရန် စနစ်တကျ ဆောင်ရွက်ပေးရေး၊
(င) မသန်စွမ်းသူများ၏အချက်အလက်များကို ဒေသအလိုက် ရယူအသုံးပြုနိုင်စေရန် Mapping များပြုလုပ်ပြီး ဘေးအန္တရာယ်ကြုံတွေ့ရမှုများတွင် မသန်စွမ်းသူများကို ဦးစားပေး ကယ်ဆယ် ဆောင်ရွက်နိုင်စေရန် စီမံထားရှိပေးနိုင်ရေး၊
(စ) ဘေးအန္တရာယ်ကာကွယ်မှုဆိုင်ရာ ရုပ်ပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာ၊ စိတ်ပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာ အတားအဆီးများကို လျော့ကျ နိုင်ရန် သေချာစွာဆောင်ရွက်မည်ဖြစ်ပြီး ကာကွယ်ရေးပစ္စည်းများ၊ အဆောက်အဦများ၊ စနစ်များ၊ အစီအစဉ်များကို သေချာခိုင်မာစေရန် မူဝါဒရေးဆွဲ၍ အကောင်အထည်ဖော် ဆောင်ရွက်နိုင်ရေး၊
(ဆ) အနာဂတ်ဖက်ဒရယ်ပြည်ထောင်စုပေါ်ပေါက်ရေးနှင့် ဖက်ဒရယ်အခြေခံသော လူမှု-စီးပွား ကဏ္ဍစုံ မူဝါဒများ ရေးဆွဲနိုင်ရေး ညှိနှိုင်းဆောင်ရွက်ကြရာတွင် မသန်စွမ်းသူများကို ချန်လှပ်ခြင်း မရှိစေရေး။..."
Source/publisher:
Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management - NUG
Date of publication:
2022-02-16
Date of entry/update:
2022-02-16
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Language:
Format :
pdf
Size:
438.06 KB
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Description:
"Myanmar Vice President U Henry Van Thio called for the creation of a disabled-accessible society at a ceremony marking the International Day of Persons with Disabilities on Tuesday.
"Everyone needs to join hands to reduce inequalities and create a society which provides physical accessibility and assistive technology for persons with disabilities," said the vice president, also chairman of the National Committee on Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
The vice president pledged that the implementation of disabled-friendly infrastructure will be done under the management of the respective ministries.
International Day of Persons with Disabilities is observed annually on Dec. 3 since 1992.
According to the 2014 Myanmar census, 4.6 percent of the country's population of some 50.3 million are living with disabilities..."
Source/publisher:
"Xinhua" (China)
Date of publication:
2019-12-03
Date of entry/update:
2019-12-04
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Rights of people with disabilities
Language:
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Description:
Conclusion:
"This participatory study concludes that whilst a wide range of organisations in Myanmar are attempting to understand the challenges faced by, and are providing for; people with disability living in the country, there are many gaps in the understanding and awareness of disability in Myanmar. Particularly, understanding as to what is and what is not classed as disability and a lack of qualified people and knowledge of supporting and accommodating disability in society, is delaying the development of a strong foundation on which to build an inclusive society.
The survey found that the majority of service provision for people with disability in Myanmar is based in the Yangon area, and is therefore greatly inaccessible to people with disability living outside of the city, especially in rural areas. Service provision in Myanmar tends to view people with disability through a narrow lens, as beneficiaries and receivers of services, rather than as employees and participants in strategy development and implementation. Additionally, whilst many service providers are aware of community-based rehabilitation as an effective approach for improving the lives of people with disability, none provide the full compliment of services.
Inadequate educational provision creates the greatest hurdle to inclusion in society for people with disabilities. The majority of people with disability and their families who were surveyed desire to see nationwide, inclusive educational programs in mainstream government schools.
Finally, a lack of networking amongst organisations and international parties greatly hinders the work of organisations working with people with disability, and the building of bridges between PWDs, families and service providers is necessary to improve communication, information sharing and collaboration between people affected by or supporting disability."
Salai Vanni Bawi
Source/publisher:
Salai Vanni Bawi
Date of publication:
2012-00-00
Date of entry/update:
2012-08-11
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Rights of people with disabilities
Language:
English
Format :
pdf
Size:
521.53 KB
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Description:
"No one knows how many people have been affected by landmines in Burma, the only state to consistently lay mines since 1997. Some who step on mines die immediately, but most will survive to live with severely disabling injuries. For the latter there is little in the way of immediate or long-term medical assistance available from the country?s impoverished medical system.
Hope is on the horizon, however. On Friday last week the UN announced the accession of Burma to the Convention on the Rights of Disabled People (CRPD). This rights-based document could bring about a significant improvement in the quality of life for landmine victims and other people living with disabilities in the country. For that improvement to happen in the lifetime of current survivors, the convention needs to be implemented, meaning Burma must focus on generating necessary services in the areas where survivors live – given that landmines are mostly laid in the country?s remote border regions whose development has never taken place, this will be no easy feat..."
Yeshua Moser Puangsuwan
Source/publisher:
Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB)
Date of publication:
2011-12-12
Date of entry/update:
2012-07-03
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-Personnel Landmines - Specialist organisations and commentary, Rights of people with disabilities
Language:
English
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Description:
"Suggestions for disability-relevant questions to be included in the list of issues for pre-sessional working group CRC 58th session.
IDA submissions to the CRC Committee highlight the rights of children with disabilities and aim to promote and mainstream the standards of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities into the Committee?s work. "
Source/publisher:
International Disability Alliance (IDA)
Date of publication:
2011-02-01
Date of entry/update:
2012-01-17
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Language:
English
Format :
pdf
Size:
218.12 KB
Local URL:
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Description:
"Disabled Village Children is a guide for community health workers, rehabilitation workers, and families. With more than 4,000 line drawings and 200 photos, this is an exciting book of information and ideas for all who are concerned about the well-being of disabled children. It is especially for those who live in rural areas where resources are limited. But it is also for therapists and professionals who assist community-based programs or who want to share knowledge and skills with families and concerned members of the commnunity.
The book gives a wealth of clear, simple, but detailed information about most common disabilities of children: many different physical disabilities, blindness, deafness, fits, behavior problems, and developmental delay. It gives suggestions for simplified rehabilitation, low-cost aids, and ways to help disabled children find a role and be accepted in the community.
Above all, the book helps us to realize that most of the answers for meeting these children's needs can be found within the community, the family, and in the children themselves. It discusses ways of starting small community rehabilitation centers and workshops run by disabled persons or the families of disabled children..."... PART 1. WORKING WITH THE CHILD AND FAMILY:
Information on Different Disabilities...PART 2. WORKING WITH THE COMMUNITY:
Village Involvement in the Rehabilitation, Social Integration, and Rights of Disabled Children...PART 3. WORKING IN THE SHOP:
Rehabilitation Aids and Procedures
with the help of many friends Drawings by the author
David Werner
Source/publisher:
Hesperian Foundation
Date of publication:
1999-00-00
Date of entry/update:
2005-02-17
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Online health resources, Medical handbooks and manuals, Rights of people with disabilities
Language:
English
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