SURVIVORS NEED EQUAL RIGHTS

SURVIVORS NEED EQUAL RIGHTS
REGIONAL CONFERENCE
MINE ACTION AND IMPLICATIONS FOR PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT
11-13-March-2007
PHNOM PENH-CAMBODIA
Firoz ALI ALIZADA

People with disabilities or victims have the same rights and dignity as others, but unfortunately due to lack of attention and inadequate available services most of the time the important and vital element which is equability of rights and opportunities has been missing and trampling along the past decades. I have been growing up in Afghanistan a country faced decades of war, violence, economic problem, poverties, drought, lack of health care and many other vast problems… You might think the mentioned problems will be targeting all the population living there, but we have to bear in mind and consider the most vulnerable suffering severely much more than others, WHO ARE THEY? They have been victims and persons with disabilities along the history of human beings, unfortunately!

Of course persons with disabilities never want the rest of population to be maimed by landmines, cluster munitions or anything which harm the civilians. But victims also want to have equal opportunity and their natural dignity safe as human beings.
In order to achieve that, each victim needs five steps of service availability to be able to integrate and lives as others in the society and function as he/she wants to do so:
It starts from providing:
Phase-1: Emergency and continuing medical care (this service can rescue a victim to survive and carry on) but to survive without parts of body or damaged body needs:
Phase-2: Physical rehabilitation (PR can able a person to walk to talk to eat ) but walking, talking and eating will not be useful and helpful in a isolated condition, in order to live in a society he/she needs:
Phase-3: Psychological support and social reintegration (once, the victim psychologically supported he/she can be able to forget the past what ever he/she could do, than victim needs to be socially reintegrated, but you need to follow some more steps to reintegrate him/her, to do so we need to:
Phase-4: Economic reintegration (this steps of service providing is very crucial and meanwhile very much vital, it can change a victim psychologically, socially and even physically) but how will you sustain this system? It is easy if you develop:
Phase-5: Laws and public policies (laws and public policies can grantee the above mentioned steps or better to say only law and polices can grantee the rights of victims or persons with disabilities).

Persons with disabilities have been dreaming and advocating for decades for having a law to grantee their rights, whom finally overcame and developed the International convention on the protection and promotion of the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities which is fortunately approved by UN-General Assembly in last December.
So, it means now we are asking the respectable states very legally to respect the persons with disabilities based on his/her rights as human beings, not based on charities and sympathies. What doest it mean to respect? It means to address and respond to their needs and requirements as soon as you can.
I HOPE SO!