Grassroots researchers examine the barriers and ways of implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in Africa. Many have praised the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), first adopted by the UN in 2006, as a revolutionary step towards disability rights in Africa. But how real is the progress towards equality for persons with physical disabilities, mental health difficulties, blindness, deafness or albinism? What are the barriers to the CRPD's successful implementation on the continent, and how might we enforce inclusiveness and equality among those disadvantaged? This book brings together the findings of researchers in Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa to offer grassroots' perspectives on the challenges and possibilities of achieving disability rights under the CRPD. Challenging the generally optimistic view presented to date, the contributors provide evidence-based trenchant critiques of the Convention, highlight the ways in which disability rights are interpreted in varying contexts and with different disabilities, and examine particular issues in relation to children and women. Finally, the contributors suggest ways of moving forward and achieving disability rights in Africa.

This book is about life conditions of people with disabilities in violent conflict situations. The book examines how violent conflict affects disabled people. It explores the perceptions and meanings of disability in such situations and examines the socio-cultural dynamics that shape the response of disabled people to the challenges brought about by conflict. The main argument is that the body is the basis for sociality and at the same time, sociality shapes that body. The book demonstrates this by showing how limbs are directly linked to lives not only through their biological function of making it possible for the bodies to physically move from one place to another, but also by being the basis for sociality, which sociality also influences the functioning of the limbs, shaping disabled people's life experiences. Thus, the life experiences of disabled people cannot be described in terms of their impairments alone. Their abilities and disabilities are functions of the quality of their social relations and interactions; they are a reflection of the social response to their conditions, and the incorporation of sociality in their bodies - embodied sociality.