Focus on women with disabilities

NADI – Strengthening partnership and action towards an inclusive Pacific for women with disabilities will be the emphasis of the Pacific Regional Women Conference on Disability 2015.

The Conference is being hosted by the Pacific Disability Forum at the Tanoa International Hotel in Nadi, Fiji this week.

The conference will give opportunities for women with disabilities in the Pacific to share experiences and issues that they face in their various countries.

Together with disability stakeholders – DPOs, CSOs, development partners, donors, and disability service providersc – the conference wants to explore ways forward for women with disabilities in the region.

Throughout the Pacific, in both urban and rural communities, women and girls with disabilities face multiple and compounding forms of discrimination, a press release states.

They are targets of discrimination not only due to their disability, but also their gender.

In addition, they are often poor and face various other challenges unknown to most people.

Wherever discrimination occurs, they often experience further prejudice, based on common assumptions and widely held beliefs about their status and capacity both as females and as persons with disabilities.

Partnership plays an important role in addressing these issues faced by women and girls with disabilities and importantly, advancing the inclusion of women and girls with disabilities in the Pacific.

In particular, urgent work is needed to develop and implement laws, policies and programmes that advance the rights of women and girls with disabilities.

The conference aims to push for the inclusion of women and girls with disabilities in mainstream education, employment, sexual and reproductive health services, general health services, economic empowerment and participation and easy access of the justice system around the Pacific for women and girls with disabilities.

This can best be done with strong partnership and solidarity by all parties and stakeholders in promoting the mainstreaming and inclusion of women and girls with disabilities together with a series of targeted actions.

It will develop and strengthen an effective partnership and, realistic actions towards a disability Inclusive pacific for women and girls with disabilities.

The Pacific Women Regional Conference on Disability is being held concurrently with the Pacific Youth Regional Conference on Disability.

An outcome statement from the women and youth conference will be tabled at the main conference to ensure that women and youth with disabilities are included in the discussion of ways forward for disability in the Pacific.