Lesotho is a small state within the Republic of South Africa. It has a population of approximately 2 million people. Persons with disabilities are estimated at 2.5% of the total population. However, there is discrepancy in disability data due to the different and traditional tools used to determine disability in Lesotho.
Organizations of Persons with Disabilities (OPD’s) are closely working with government at all levels advocating for the disability specific and inclusive laws, policies and services for persons with disabilities.
The OPD’s priorities include prevention of gender based violence against women and girls with disabilities, and their economic empowerment. Another area of work is advocating for disability inclusive education and capacity building for OPD’s.
Persons with disabilities face considerable barriers in terms of access to education, employment, healthcare, social protection and other social services due to discrimination and stigma attached to disability by the communities.
In terms of education, we started to work with the Ministry of Education in 2016 to develop the inclusive education policy and it was adopted in 2019. Since then, we have been advocating for its implementation plan and supporting boys and girls with disabilities to enroll in the regular schools.
Most laws are discriminatory but my take away from the group sharing stories is that OPD’s are up to the task and are taking responsibility to challenge such laws. However, the government response towards inclusive education is not satisfactory.
We have partnered with UNICEF Lesotho to support the government to implement inclusive education. There has been a creation of ‘model’ schools which are providing inclusive education and we are advocating to the government to increase the numbers! We are also supporting teacher training institutions to revise their curriculum to embrace inclusive education over special education.
The barriers in inclusive education are broad, including negative attitudes from the community, teachers lacking knowledge; universities and teacher training institutions still struggling to consider disability as a social and human right issue. This makes things difficult to change within a short space of time.
Model schools are schools integrating children with disabilities and we saw the opportunity to support them becoming inclusive and providing education to children with disabilities as a matter of right. Lesotho National Federation of Organizations of Persons with Disabilities (LNFOD) has been fundraising from the development partners to support the schools with assistive technology devices for learning and training. In Lesotho, we believe that OPD’s should drive the agenda of inclusion by working with the government, so that the model sits within the government with our support as OPD’s. I believe moving away from activism to advocacy is the way to go. It has been said that activism can create conflict. By co-producing issues it is possible to create the positive progress needed.