Doubts on attaining MDGs as disabled children suffer

With a population of about 13 million, Zimbabwe is battling to contain over 600 000 marginalised children living with disabilities out of about 6,4 million children, according to June 2013 figures released by United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), Zimbabwe office.

Winstone Antonio

Two years away from the deadline of the set international development standards, rights groups say the marginalisation of children with disabilities will impede Zimbabwe’s attainment of the 2015 United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The MDGs are eight international development goals that 192 United Nations member states agreed to achieve by the year 2015.

A 2004 report by Save the Children Fund of Norway indicated that 87% of children needing special care in Zimbabwe are being sexually abused while more than half of them were found to be HIV-positive, with 47% of them mentally challenged.

According to UNICEF, Zimbabwe’s official launch of the State Of The World’s 2013 Children report, children with disabilities are most at risk of neglect, exploitation and sexual abuse.

Farai Mukuta, executive director for the National Association of Societies for the Care of the Handicapped (NASCOH) said Zimbabwe cannot attain the MDGs without attending to thousands of marginalised children living with disabilities.

“We are far from fulfilling the MDGs as long as thousands of children living with disabilities are still marginalised and downtrodden in a country with over 6 million children,” Mukuta said.

Mukuta also said children living with disabilities lacked access to the fundamental freedoms and rights accessed by able-bodied children.

“Children with disabilities run a greater risk of abandonment, abuse, neglect and violence than their able-bodied counterparts and they lack access to the fundamental freedoms and rights that other children and people in society take for granted,” he said.

Zimbabwe made significant strides in achieving the MDGs in the 1980s, but the economic and humanitarian crisis of the last decade has stalled or in some cases reversed many of the gains.

Consequently, many, like 56-year-old Never Gumbi, MDGs with his disabled 16-year-old son out of school, mean nothing to him.

“I’m hearing about that (MDGs) from you. With my son disabled and out of school, that is helpless,” said Gumbi.

Lauren Rumble, UNICEF Zimbabwe’s chief of child protection said disabled children are the most vulnerable and marginalised.

“Children with disabilities often experience multiple deprivations, limiting their opportunities and marginalising them further. This is true also for Zimbabwe; children with disabilities are too often hidden behind closed doors, left off birth registers or shut away in institutions and forgotten,” said Rumble during the UNICEF official launch of the State Of The World’s Children Report 2013 recently.

According to UNICEF, globally, 10% of children are less likely to attend Primary school while in Zimbabwe 29% of the disabled children never attend school.

Zimbabwe’s estimated record of 93 percent literacy rate among its school-going children is ranked the best on the African continent, but the country’s approximately 300 000 disabled children are not in school.

Dorcas Chimbwa of Epworth told NewsDay that her husband refused to educate their children, a 15-year-old boy who can neither walk nor talk and his deaf-dumb 11-year-old brother.

NASCOH’s last month (June 2013) report highlight that above 52% of children with disabilities have no access to primary education.


Zimbabwe ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in May 2013, which mirrors commitments in the new Constitution to people with disabilities.

But Henry Gadzikwa, a Harare-based independent sociologist said parents and guardians of children with disabilities have a pivotal role to play to help government reach the UN MDGs.

“Government cannot achieve the MDGs single-handedly, but there is need for parents and guardians of children with disabilities to ensure they educate their disabled children as education can be a key to relieve disabled children of their plight,” Gadzikwa said.

The World Health Organisation estimates that only 33%of children with disabilities in Zimbabwe have access to education, compared to over 90% able-bodied children.



Source : News Day , 6th July 2013