Liberia: Call for Self-Representation

In the aftermath of the civil war, the disabled people of Liberia find themselves in dire circumstances of poverty and powerlessness. The war has also caused an increase in their number to 320,000, equalling 16 percent of the population.   Blind persons alone number some 77, 000.

"We must move disabled people out of welfare and into rights and development," says Beyan Kota of the Christian Association of the Blind in Liberia.

Interviewed on the BBC World Service, Kota said that various groups of disabled people - blind, deaf, physically and multiply disabled - had decided to join forces in the establishment of the National Union of the Organizations of the Disabled in Liberia.   The politicians had failed them, he said, and now they demanded self-representation.   "We want at least one seat in the Interim Assembly," said Kota, President of the new Union.

Over the past 18 months the plight of disabled Liberians has come to world attention in stark reports:

• 60 blind persons captive in rebel territory, the carers abducted, with four fatalities from hunger and stray bullets;
• disabled and elderly people in headlong flight towards the capital city, Monrovia, before the advancing rebel forces; and
• four civilians killed by rocket explosion outside a blind people's shelter.

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