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CAPITAL CORP. SYDNEY

73 Ocean Street, New South Wales 2000, SYDNEY

Contact Person: Callum S Ansell
E: callum.aus@capital.com
P: (02) 8252 5319

WILD KEY CAPITAL

22 Guild Street, NW8 2UP,
LONDON

Contact Person: Matilda O Dunn
E: matilda.uk@capital.com
P: 070 8652 7276

LECHMERE CAPITAL

Genslerstraße 9, Berlin Schöneberg 10829, BERLIN

Contact Person: Thorsten S Kohl
E: thorsten.bl@capital.com
P: 030 62 91 92

What Challenges Do People with Intellectual Disabilities and their families face in Africa?

About Intellectual Disability

What Challenges Do People with Intellectual Disabilities and their families face in Africa?

Persons with intellectual disabilities and their families in Africa are constantly confronted with staggering levels of unemployment, extreme poverty, inequality and exclusion. Issues of stigmatisation and discrimination continue to be a major challenge. Notwithstanding the fact that some African Governments have signed and subsequently ratified the CRPD, most of the national disability laws being implemented in those countries are CRPD non-compliant.
In Africa there exists deeply rooted stigma and widely held discriminatory attitudes towards persons with intellectual disabilities, which undermines many efforts to bring about change, both at the government and NGO level. In many of our member countries, intellectual disabilities are attributed to spiritual matters or ‘juju’ and thus families known to have a child with an intellectual disability can be ostracized and feared. This drives the issue underground, so that babies and children with intellectual disabilities are hidden, locked in rooms, denied access to health care and education. Sometimes these children are killed. Due to this level of stigma, persons with intellectual disabilities are often invisible in the community and excluded from participation in the social, economic and cultural life of their communities.

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