Human Rights in Africa Lecture Series: The Protection of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Africa

The lecture will look at the challenges and opportunities in implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in Africa. The recognition that persons with disabilities have human rights, and are not merely recipients of charity, is reflected by a paradigm shift put forward by the CRPD. In understanding this paradigm shift, the lecture will touch on the status of disability in Africa and explore some of the perceptions of disability, as well as the interconnections between poverty and disability. With a strong focus on the impact of the CRPD on the lives of Africans with disabilities, some of the procedural and substantive challenges to the implementation of the CRPD in Africa will be examined. However, these challenges are surmountable. While the lecture draws examples from some Africa countries and touch on the different categories of disabilities, it will focus more on persons with mental health (psychosocial) and intellectual disabilities, since some examples will be cited from the work of Mental Disability Advocacy Center (MDAC) in Africa.

Eyong Louis Mbuen is the Legal Officer of the Mental Disability Advocacy Center in Budapest. He joined MDAC as a Policy and Advocacy Officer in September 2009. Eyong is from Cameroon and has a law degree and post graduate diploma in law from the University of Yaoundé II in Soa, Cameroon. In 2008, he completed an M.A in International Law and Human Rights at the United Nations Mandated University for Peace, San Jose, Costa Rica. In 2009, he obtained an LL.M in Human Rights from the Central European University. Eyong heads MDAC programming into Africa and is responsible for developing and implementing the organization’s programming outside Europe. Among the disability related workshop and conferences he has participated in are the seminar on human rights monitoring and the CRPD organized by the Secretariat of the African Decade of Persons with Disabilities in September 2009 in Cape Town, South Africa, the International Disability Alliance workshop on NGO capacity building to use the UN human rights mechanisms in January 2010 in the UN headquarters in Geneva, and the Disability Rights Fund Grantees convening meeting in March 2010 in Kampala, Uganda, where he gave a presentation on legal capacity under the CRPD.