Convention of Rights 7: Women with disabilities

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities (CRPD) forms the foundation of disability rights laws in Uganda and is the model for the Persons With Disabilities Act (PWDA) 2006. The CRPD underlines and recognizes that persons with disabilities (PWDs) are entitled to all the human rights enunciated in the The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If you are a PWD the rights in the CRPD are your rights, if you do not have a disability it is your duty to uphold and promote these rights.

Article 6 of the CRPD states that women and girls with disabilities face multiple discrimination. All measures should be taken to ensure that women and girls with disabilities enjoy full equal rights and fundamental freedoms with other citizens. Moreover, women should have the opportunity to achieve their full development, advancement and empowerment.

There is little doubt that women with disabilities (WWDs) are some of the most vulnerable members of society, often living in poverty and suffering multi-discrimination. Article 6 of the CRPD illustrates how discrimination can be multilayered. Listed below are a few examples of discrimination when they are combined discrimination becomes multilayered:

• Gender, where men or boys are favoured over women or girls.
• Disability, where the non-disabled are favoured over the disabled.
• Age, where the elderly are less favoured than the young.
• Racial, where a minority ethnicity is seen as inferior.
• Cultural, where women cannot inherit land.

Article 6 is important for WWDs because the CRPD is the only Convention or piece of international legislation that specifically protects WWDs (see Article 6 [Women with Disabilities]). Besides acknowledging gender as a basis for discrimination, disability is also explicitly named. This Article therefore recognizes that discrimination is multilayered and that WWDs suffer many types of discrimination. 

If you are a WWD or a girl with a disability the CRPD was set up to eliminate all forms of discrimination and to develop, enhance and empower women. You should not have to face discrimination in any form.

Working against disability.
Women with disabilities face multilayered discrimination. Besides being female and disabled these women are discriminated by their culture where women are not supposed to own land unless they have purchased it from their own money.

This is written in Article 6 of the CRPD in the following way:

Article 6

Women with disabilities

1. States Parties recognize that women and girls with disabilities are subject to multiple discrimination, and in this regard shall take measures to ensure the full and equal enjoyment by them of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.

2. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure the full development, advancement and empowerment of women, for the purpose of guaranteeing them the exercise and enjoyment of the human rights and fundamental freedoms set out in the present Convention.