4.3.3 Disability and PRSP
In August 2004 (I)NGOs were invited to comment in writing within 14 days on the last draft of the PRSP, which created extremely high time pressure. Together with local partners (among others, the National Committee of Rehabilitation for People with Disabilities), Handicap International wrote a position paper which was partly geared to the Bangladeshi position paper, the main sources being again the ILO paper and the UN Standard Rules. This position paper was sent to the planning committee, to various donors and to the Ministry of Social Welfare. The introduction of the paper strongly criticises the way in which disability is generally treated in the PRSP draft, which it argues ensures that “disabled persons will still remain in the deepest black holes where they have remained over centuries.” (Handicap International Sierra Leone, 2004). The government, it states, addresses people with disabilities in an inappropriate way, even though there consultations with people with disabilities did take place in the PRSP formulation process. The position paper, which analyses the PRSP draft chapter by chapter, criticises and makes suggestions concerning mainly the terminology: words like “the disabled”, “the handicapped” or even the “crippled” are said to “reflect the lack of knowledge and absence of a real definition”. Further criticism relates to the lack of data and the use of unreliable figures, resulting in a general misunderstanding of “disability”, which is mainly reduced to physical impairment, e.g. loss of limbs as the consequence of war. The position paper also disapproves of the actions planned as being purely global and unspecific, because if disability is to be seriously integrated into policies and society, it needs to become a cross-cutting issue.
