respect sexual rights of the disabled - FODSWA

Presenting during the NGO Forum on Swazilands’ 15 year commemoration on International Conference on Population and Development at the Mountain Inn, Bheki Jele made a plea for service providers to stop discriminating people with disabilities when it comes to their rights to access reproductive health services.

Jele highlighted that people with disabilities’ population stands at 3per cent according to the census of 1997, which has understandably increased to 18per cent in recent years.

“People with disability form a significant and vulnerable part of the majority of Swaziland, whose human rights have been violated for centuries (killing, no access to social services, inaccessible physical infrastructure, and cultural barriers”, Jele lamented
When it comes to reproductive health services, the service providers in most health centres in Swaziland have a negative attitude.
Jele made a classic example of a physically disabled woman who went to one health facility for pregnancy check-up when the nurses frowned at her pregnancy and asking her silly questions like “How did you get pregnant?” “For us as FODSWA this is shocking, how else do people in Swaziland get pregnant except through sexual intercourse. This clearly shows that our society does not view persons with disabilities as people with sexual and reproductive health needs just like all people,” Jele added
Swaziland is a signatory to the United Nations Charter on Rights of People with Disabilities, whose Article 23 talks about elimination of discrimination that persons with disabilities may face with regard to reproductive rights, household and family formation.

A story of Lucky shared during the forum clearly indicates most of the challenges faced by people with disability. “When I grew up my family was not supportive because they did not see the value of educating a visually impaired person. The family felt that my education was a waste of time and money. I almost gave up, but persevered and struggled to get sponsors to support my education through to tertiary level (Lucky has a BA in Theology) but still cannot get work in Swaziland” he says

Coming to Sexual and Reproductive Health, here are some of the issues that the story of Lucky highlights:
*   Access to information on SRH services is also very difficult particularly for the visually impaired people as the presentation of information does not consider their specific needs.

*    Most information is in pamphlets which are not translated into Braille

nIn counselling rooms, most nurses do not understand sign language and they cannot communicate with the deaf and dumb.

* There is also an increase in teenage pregnancy amongst people living with disability and there is need to educate them on how to prevent pregnancy, STI’s and HIV.