Section 5: Recommendations for Programme Action
Future Application of Research Results
The overall rationale of this project was shaped by the eventual application of these research results. Now that the project has produced accurate and reliable data with respect to the human rights situation of people with disabilities in Kenya, evidence-based recommendations for law, policy and programming improvements can be made. Such recommendations are intended to:
- inform people about violations of the rights of people with disabilities,
- stop existing and prevent future rights violations of people with disabilities,
- provide evidence to support advocacy for changes in laws, policies, and programs to improve the lives of people with disabilities, and
- monitor the Kenyan government’s progress in fulfilling the commitments it has made to people with disabilities through its ratification of international human rights treaties.
Recommendations for Programme Action
The results of the study clearly indicate the need to promote equal enjoyment of human rights for disabled persons and to respond to their economic, socio-cultural and political needs through various mechanisms. In light of these concerns, several recommendations for future programme action have been identified from the major conclusions of the report in order to effectively address the human rights needs of disabled persons. These include issues related to D.P.O.s and human rights, the mainstreaming of human rights concerns in public programmes, and recommendations regarding legislation, legal support and arbitration, and advocacy.
Strengthening of D.P.O.s' Capacity in Addressing Human Rights
There is an urgent need for D.P.O.s and other organizations to design and implement human rights specific interventions in order to reverse the indicators illustrated in this study. The components of such action will be:
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Peer Mechanisms for Self Advocacy
A peer mechanism self advocacy programme (P.M.A.P.) works at the level of the individual disabled person to provide human rights information and education on significant barriers. Such obstacles include discriminatorily attitudes, abuse and violence in the family, school, workplace, the community at large and public authorities. A P.M.A.P. also offers information on barriers to communication, access to education, public services and authorities, as well as aspects of the physical environment such as transport systems and workplaces. -
Human rights education
Disabled people and their organizations should develop a comprehensive and strategic human rights education campaign to raise rights awareness among disabled people and the general public. Some of the respondents who had undergone human rights violations were unaware that their rights were being violated and in other cases they would not report violations out of fear. Such issues might be reduced through well targeted education campaigns using straightforward comprehensible language and accessible formats. -
Collaborative networks
D.P.O.s should engage in building strong collaborative networks amongst themselves. Such networks and Coalitions would be more effective in protecting and promoting the rights of disabled people.
Mainstreaming Disability Rights in Public Service
The lack of a constitutional provision that directs government bodies to mainstream disability issues needs to be addressed.
- The government should mainstream disability issues by incorporating information about the human rights of disabled people in all training curricula for its officers. This would allow individual officers to be responsive to reports of human rights violations by disabled people.
- The government should develop and implement a disability training curriculum for civil servants as a further strategy for mainstreaming disability. Such a curriculum would take a human rights approach to development as a strategy for creating equity in Kenyan society. This would ensure that government agencies and employers respond to disability issues promptly, intelligently and in ways that respects the rights and dignity of disabled people.
- The government should incorporate disability in its national development strategy.
Legislation
- Disabled people and their organizations must initiate or engage in processes that will lead to the entrenchment of anti-discrimination clauses in the constitution. This could be done through the disability constitution working group. Disabled people could also sponsor motions in parliament for constitutional amendments.
- The Persons with Disability Act 2003 (P.D.A.) needs to be amended so that it is no longer anchored on the Standard Rules of Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities but on current international and regional human rights conventions. As well, the penalties in the act should be more severe in order to prevent disability discrimination.
- Disabled people, their organizations and human rights groups should lobby the relevant government departments for the ratification and domestication of the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (I.C.R.P.D.).
- The P.D.A. needs to be harmonized with other laws so that it becomes operational.
Legal Support and Arbitration
- Disabled people should have access to the court process in order to challenge disability discrimination. This could be done through a disability legal aid system that offers representation to disabled people. The Legal Aid Clinic could also take up public interest cases that would increase the impact through precedent setting of elimination of disability discrimination. The Legal Aid Clinic should also train judicial officers and lawyers on disability and human rights, and build a national network of disability paralegals to provide legal advice to disabled people and to act as arbitrators.
- In cases where abuse has occurred it is important that D.P.O.s develop referral mechanisms to direct people to support services and recovery centres in order to receive counseling for post violation trauma.
Advocacy
- All law and policy should reflect the principles of disability as a human rights issue.
- Disabled people, through their organizations, should effectively participate in all levels of decision-making.
- The government should promote equal opportunity for disabled people and respect for difference in all spheres of life.
Further work
- There is a need for more research in order to identify patterns of human rights violations among specific population segments, such as children, women, pastoralists, hawkers, disabled workers in sheltered workshops, Internally Displacement Persons (I.D.P.s), refugees, and disabled people in institutionalized environments.
- There is an urgent need for comprehensive law research to identify the exact nature of disability discrimination caused by existing legislation. The offending laws could then be the target of advocacy and lobbying campaigns.
- D.P.O.s should continue to conduct disability rights monitoring on an annual basis to appraise the state of the human rights of disabled people. Annual reports of this assessment can be used to provide information for the monitoring mechanism of the I.C.R.P.D.