Disability Community in Ghana Unites to Integrate its Concerns in Poverty Reduction Strategy
By VSO Nederland
Reprinted from Dutch Coalition on Disability and Development (www.dcdd.nl)
Wednesday, the 27th of July 2005 has been a great day for disability in Ghana. VSO Ghana, their disability partners and some other stakeholders had a one-day meeting with the National Development and Planning Commission on including disability in the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper II (GPRS II). At the end of the day the joint disability lobby managed to get policy objectives included into the following Thematic Areas of the GPRS II:
- Production and Gainful Employment
- Human Development
- Good Governance
- Vulnerability and Exclusion
Previously disability only appeared under the Vulnerability and Exclusion Thematic Area, but now it will appear in all the thematic areas. This is good news for the disability movement in Ghana and its partners because this is the beginning of great things to come, e.g. disability will feature in the 2006 budget of the Government of Ghana and even for the subsequent years to follow. Some areas strongly emphasized today were: training of sign language interpreters, accessibility of HIV/AIDS information both to the blind and the deaf, education etc.
There were around 35 participants in the meeting. VSO Ghana's Acting Country Director was asked to chair the meeting. He reported that he had never seen such a great cooperation and one voice among disability organizations as he saw today.
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