Faridah Luyiga
JOURNALISTS have been urged to adopt a positive
attitude while reporting on disability issues.
During a two-day workshop on disability reporting for
journalists in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia last week,
participants acknowledged that Persons With
Disabilities (PWDs) have continued to suffer from
relative invisibility.
The Unesco Addis Ababa Cluster Office in conjunction
with the Secretariat of the African Decade of Persons
with Disabilities (SADPD) organised the workshop on the
theme: Disability Reporting from a Human Rights
Perspective.
According to statistics from SADPD, PWDs are not
regularly seen in the media and are rarely portrayed as
persons with opinions on news and topical issues.
Their disability is almost always at the centre stage
of any news on them.
The media, it was noted, always portrays persons with
disabilities pitifully or with astonishment because they
have managed to do something remarkable despite their
physical impairment.
SADPD Communications Officer Lina Lindblom urged
journalists to always consider the fact that PWDs are not
only interested in disability related matters.
"They are part of all levels of society and have
opinions, experience and knowledge about all sorts of
issues," she said.
Journalists were called upon to shape the public image
of PWDs since they are in a unique position to do so and
increase awareness about the situation of PWDs in Africa,
promote positive attitudes towards children, youth, women
and men. Participants also acknowledged the need to
support PWDs'rights and keep state parties accountable
through media attention.
The fourth estate was called upon to adopt proper
language usage and avoid such offensive words as cripple,
deaf, blind, disadvantaged in reference to PWDs.
According to statistics from World Health
Organisation, PWDs represent 10 per cent of the world's
population with 80 per cent in developing countries. PWDs
are more often than not, poor, unemployed, excluded from
political life, marginalised and hidden victims of
violence especially the children and women.
The development of the first ever Convention on the
rights of PWDs recently adopted by the UN and to which
Uganda is signatory, reflects the growing international
acknowledgment of disability rights as human rights.
The workshop attracted participants from Uganda,
Kenya, Tanzania, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Ghana,
South Africa, Sudan and Burundi.
Source
www.monitor.co.ug
