Disabled children – the poorest of the poor?

The international policy conference on the African child started in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia today. The Ethiopian President, Girma Woldegiorgis specifically highlighted disabled children as particularly vulnerable to poverty and that’s certainly borne out by my experience – where in already poor families, deaf children are often the first ones to be denied access to education and pushed into labouring on family farms or hawking on the streets.

He also talked about the millions of girls who are victims of physical and sexual abuse accross Africa – and that’s something which also disproportionately affects disabled children. The UN Report on Violence Against Disabled Children in 2005 said that the world’s 200 million disabled children were at least 1.7 times as likely to be the victims of abuse than their non-disabled peers. More horrifying data has been found in specific country studies – a national survey of deaf adults in Norway found 80% of all deaf individuals surveyed report sexual abuse at some point in their childhood

So what is the solution? The African Child Policy Forum said that halving world poverty is impossible without focusing on child poverty. I would add that within a focus on child poverty, a focus on disabled children is also essential.

We need investment in health, education and nutrition of children – but we also need to make sure those investments promote services that are accessible to disabled children and challenge the stigma and discrimination that affects many disabled children in Africa.

I will await the outcomes of the policy conference – but more importantly I will await action from African governments, and development agencies. The sooner consideration of how to include disabled children becomes a mandatory part of development aid, the better.