Implementation of Disability Rights in Malawi

A researcher at the Community Law Centre, Dr Enoch Chilemba was invited to make a presentation at the Advanced Disability Rights Course held at the University of Pretoria, Centre for Human Rights from 9 to 13 March 2015. He presented on ‘The Implementation of Disability Rights in Malawi’.

In his presentation he looked at the rights-oriented developments in Malawi, including the constitutionalisation of disability, the adoption of disability rights legislation, disability-related litigation and court decisions and the establishment of bodies with a special responsibility to monitor and enforce disability rights.

He also touched on the intersection between developments in Malawi and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in terms of synergy and dissonance, broad challenges & interventions pertaining to disability rights in Malawi. Dr Chilemba also gave suggestions on the way forward for the advancement of disability rights in Malawi.

The advanced course was attended by d by LLM/MPhil students taking courses in human rights and by delegates from the human rights sector as well as a variety of sectors across the African region. The course was aimed at providing learners with knowledge and techniques that enable them to understand the development of disability as global human rights that culminated in the adoption of the CRPD.

It also designed for students to understand and apply provisions of the CRPD at an African domestic and regional level and apply the CRP human rights issue at the African regional and sub-regional levels as well as to understand and apply the intersection between the human rights and cultural aspects of disability in an African context.