The Conference will bring together a selection of persons with disabilities or their representatives, policy makers from the EAC region - Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda - members of the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) and officials from the EAC Secretariat.
Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni will deliver the keynote address at the official opening.
The EAC Treaty is somewhat weak in addressing the challenge facing people with disabilities, the secretariat said in its announcement of the conference, to be held 10-19 February 2010 in Kampala, Uganda.
Besides the apparent deficit in effective enforcement of laws in place, the EAC noted that national legislations of member states in this area are uneven in their appreciation of the broad nature of the challenge and of the needed recognition of broad-based rights of peoples with disabilities.
It said the EAC Conference on Persons with Disabilities was being organized with a definitive purpose to propose adoption of a legally-binding protocol or enactment of a regional law to govern the needs of people with disabilities.
'The EAC Treaty has not been extensive enough in defining the broad character of what is fundamentally a human rights issue,' the secretariat's Communicati ons and Public Affairs Department observed in a communiqué, pointing out that the organisation had in the last decade of its existence failed to come up with either a policy or a protocol to govern the needs of people with disabilities.
Some efforts, however, had been made at the level of the partner states to enact laws to govern the needs of people with disabilities.
Kenya, for example, has in place a Persons with Disabilities Act 2003, though it is yet to come into force. Tanzania is also about to table a Bill before its National Assembly to govern persons with disabilities.
While the EAC has lagged behind in promoting a regional policy and law to govern people with disability, both the United Nations and the African Union have made significant headway in this direction.
It is recognized internationally and within the AU framework that persons with disabilities have equal civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights.
The 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights provides, under Article 18 (4), that disabled persons have the right to special measures of protection, and under Article 16(1) the Charter spells out that every individual shall have the right to enjoy the best attainable state of physical and mental health.
A continental Plan of Action was drawn up in Addis Ababa in 2002 to serve as a guideline for AU member states in the formulation of their programmes on disability issues. The Action Plan outlined 12 objectives which the African stat es, in cooperation with civil society, were to implement during the decade.
Among the key objectives of the Plan are: Formulate and implement national policies, programmes and legislation to promote the full and equal participation of persons with disabilities; Promote the participation of persons with disabilities in the process of economic and social development; and Promote the self-representation of People with Disabilities in all public decision-making structures.
At their meeting in Windoek 31 Dec. 2008, African ministers responsible for social development adopted the Windhoek Declaration, which extended the AU Continental Decade of Persons with Disabilities, calling upon all AU members states to empower and provide persons with disabilities with equal opportunities, safeguarding their rights and enlisting their participation in all development programmes.
Dar es Salaam - Pana 09/02/2010
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