BY BUSINESS EDITOR
MBABANE – The UNESCO Regional Office for Southern Africa (ROSA), in partnership with the Government of Eswatini, launched the Inter-Ministerial Committee to mainstream Disability Inclusion.
The launch took place under the United Nations Partnership on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – (UNPRPD) Eswatini Round 4 project.
UNPRPD said the activity aims to bring together disability focal points across Eswatini’s 24-line ministries in creating synergies to better serve and include persons with disabilities in service delivery.
Under the authority of the National Disability Council, the Inter-Ministerial Committee is expected to steer intergovernmental work in the field of disability rights. This will include promoting inclusion and mainstreaming, advocating for the human rights of all Persons with Disabilities, and providing recommendations to support the implementation of provisions enshrined in UNPRPD, to which Eswatini has been a signatory since 2007 and ratified in 2012.
The implementation cycle of the Plan has just ended, whose overall objective was to ensure the promotion and protection of the rights and fundamental freedoms of persons with disabilities including empowerment to exercise those rights and enjoy equal participation in the life of the community in which they live, without discrimination of any kind on the basis of their disability.
UNPRPD said the NDPA was structured into seven main themes, each targeting the achievement of specified results through the delivery of a range of activities, which collectively had an impact on all line ministries and local government authorities.
They said mainstreaming is “a strategy for making the concerns and experiences of Persons with Disabilities an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that persons with disabilities benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve disability equality” Kingdom of Eswatini Disability Plan of Action 2018-2022.
UNPRPD added that an individual consultant will provide technical support in developing the next 5-year National Disability Action Plan (2024-2028), being guided by multistakeholder consultations and assessments of achievements, gaps, and challenges regarding the implementation of the previous strategy, to develop a new national mechanism to systematically advance disability inclusion.
Overall, the new National Disability Plan of Action will provide a framework for the Kingdom of Eswatini to facilitate the effective implementation of the National Disability Act of 2018, in alignment with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
They said the NDPA will also guide as a framework to strengthen disability inclusion in the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (2021-2026) processes.
They said more than 75 participants including the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office (DPMO), Umbrella Body, Organizations of Persons with Disabilities (FODSWA) and the UN are expected to attend the workshops.
