Rebecca Haque
Handicap International
Yei, South Sudan
As my fellow fellows launch into their sophisticated human rights analyses, I can’t help but feel a little lacking in coherent articulation myself. Over the past semester’s seminar my views on human rights clicked into place with Sally Merry’s observations that Human Rights is akin to language: both are vernacularized according to the contexts in which they operate. Presently, I am struggling with providing that context, for both my (numerous, I’m sure) readers, as well as for my own mind.
I obsessively scroll through news articles about South Sudan to find those two sentences that give context to the situation here. Lately, in the reports about the town of Pibor being ransacked by rebel troops and the army alike, it’s a “about two million people died in the war that was fuelled by divisions over religion, oil, ethnicity and ideology and ended in 2005 with a deal that paved the way for Juba’s secession.” The “deal” refers to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), a set of agreements signed by the government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). It was the official end to the Second Sudanese Civil War, and made the South semi-autonomous in an attempt to develop democratic governance and “pave the way” for the referendum that resulted in the creation of the world’s newest nation in 2011.
So, due to the nature of conflict the country has faced, the category of “disability,” covers a broad spectrum—from victims of mines and unexploded ordnance, to those with cognitive disabilities as a consequence of malnutrition. What is significant is that an official governmental definition of People With Disabilities (PWDs) does not exist in South Sudan. Disability is most commonly associated with war injuries, with war veterans being the favored target group of Disabled People’s Organizations as their recognition is aided by their ease of recognition through formal registration. This reveals an interesting dynamic- while there is little recognition of the spectrum of disability, those injured from the war are greatly respected and valorized. Government programs that provide support to PWDs almost exclusively tend towards the local production and dissemination of prosthetic limbs for persons with physical disabilities.
South Sudan is not yet a signatory of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), and there is no mention of PWDs in the present draft of the South Sudanese constitution. These facts are deeply significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is difficult to engage Human Rights discourse surrounding a particular population when there is no official recognition of a population in need of special attention. I have realized that organizations like HI are establishing the disabled as a vulnerable population—they are explicitly identifying PWDs as their own particular social category.
Secondly, because they are not identified within any official framework it is very difficult to hold violations against PWDs to any sort of legal framework or jurisprudence. There are very few larger scale stakes for the Government of South Sudan in leaving the broader needs of the disabled unfulfilled. Bringing this into the realm of development, until programs towards the disabled are mainstreamed into development programs, there will be little accountability.