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Disability Rights and Inclusiveness in Africa Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2022
Introduction
This chapter investigates the potential of the United Nations (UN) Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and Ghana's Persons with Disability Act (PwDA) as tools for achieving disability rights for deaf Ghanaians. Based on qualitative research in four field locations, the analysis focuses on awareness of the CRPD among deaf Ghanaians and the extent to which the participants have used the CRPD and PwDA as vehicles to promote deaf rights. The fieldwork reveals that deaf Ghanaians face significant barriers in both learning about the CRPD and utilizing it to promote their rights. This is particularly true for those with lower levels of education, including poor literacy in sign language. As a result, despite Ghana's implementation of the PwDA in 2006 and ratification of the CRPD in 2012, their implementation has been problematic for deaf Ghanaians. Improving this situation will require a heightened commitment from the government of Ghana to provide awareness-raising programmes, as well as capacity-building for Disabled People's Organizations (DPOs) such as the Ghana National Association of the Deaf (GNAD) to enable these organizations to support deaf Ghanaians in their struggle to achieve the rights enshrined in the CRPD and PwDA.
It is well known that 80% of the world's one billion PwDs live in the Global South and that 40% reside in Africa (World Health Organization [WHO], 2011). In Ghana, the government estimates that 3% of the total population, or about 893,000 people, live with some form of disability (Ghana Statistical Services, 2012; World Bank [WB], 2020). Of these, the estimate of the number of deaf persons in Ghana ranges between 110,625 and 211,712 (Owoo, 2019). Persons with disabilities (PwDs), including deaf persons, are often excluded from development projects. The majority lack access to social and economic services such as education, employment, and healthcare. Consequently, they experience widespread poverty, and many are unable to exercise their fundamental human rights. This exclusion from rights is underpinned by negative attitudes and prejudice towards PwDs, as well as a lack of understanding of the causes of disability, especially in Ghana and other countries in the Global South (Agbenyega, 2003; Filmer, 2008).
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