Asiwa (Ash), June 23, GNA – Children with various forms of disabilities must be accorded the same rights as other children to ensure their development, Madam Aba Oppong, the Executive Director of Rights and Responsibilities Initiatives Ghana (RRIG), has advised.
She said parents of such children should desist from hiding them from society and take them to school to unearth their potential.
She was speaking at a training session for girls with disabilities at Asiwa in the Bosome Freho District as part of a project being implemented by the Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights (ARHR) in collaboration with RRIG.
It was aimed at sensitising them on how to avoid sexual abusers and their rights to seek redress when people take advantage of their conditions to abuse them sexually.
The project dubbed: “Adolescent Girls Project” with funding from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) seeks to, among other things, sensitise adolescent girls on their sexual and reproductive health rights by providing them with the right information to make informed decisions.
About 20 girls with various forms of disabilities attended the event.
Madam Oppong said children with disabilities were also humans with equal rights as any child and must be treated with respect and dignity as stipulated in the Children’s Act.
She said it was disheartening to see how children with disabilities were discriminated against, sometimes by their parents and family members who were supposed to protect them.
She underscored the need for such children to be exposed to the school environment, where their talents could be developed to make them useful to themselves and society.
“Even if they have a disability it is important that they go to school because when they go to school they will be able to develop their talents,” she noted.
She advised the girls to learn to move away from people who would want to take advantage of them to cause physical or sexual harm.
She urged them to seek redress when sexually abused at the Department of Social Welfare, Commission of Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) of Ghana Police Srvice, and the Legal Aid Commission.
Mr Bernard Atta Aziamanyo, the District Director of CHRAJ, said girls with disabilities were most vulnerable to sexual exploitation, including their male colleagues.
He said the right of every Ghanaian, including girls with disabilities, were guaranteed under the 1992 Constitution and for that matter no one had the right to abuse people with disabilities.
According to him, every disabled person had the right to live with their family and participate in social and recreational activities and must not be subjected to differential treatment.
GNA