• CCD urges end to discrimination against disability community
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has condemned racial prejudices, noting that it will thwart the body’s aspiration for peace.
In her remarks to commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Director-General, Audrey Azoulay, said the struggle against racial discrimination is a central element of UNESCO’s work to building peace in the minds of men and women.
“While important advancements have been achieved in many areas, societies are still plagued by discrimination, racism and inequalities. None of the multifaceted and complex challenges of our times can be tackled effectively without inclusion,” she added.
According to her, the world is more interconnected, but it does not mean individuals and societies really live together, which has revealed the exclusions suffered by millions of poor, women, youth, migrants and disenfranchised minorities.
“In our turbulent globalised landscape, a central message must be heralded: peace is more than the absence of war, it is living together with our differences of sex, race, language, religion or culture, while furthering universal respect for justice and human rights on which such coexistence depends.
“Peace is a choice to be made on each situation, an everyday life decision to engage in sincere dialogue with other individuals and communities,” she noted.
The UN General Assembly Resolution 2142 (XXI), adopted on October 26, 1966, proclaimed March 21 as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to be commemorated yearly. On that day, in 1960, police opened fire and killed 69 people at a peaceful demonstration in Sharpeville, South Africa, against the apartheid “pass laws”.
Proclaiming the Day in 1966, which signifies the struggle to end the policy of apartheid in South Africa, the General Assembly called on the international community to redouble its efforts to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination.
The 2023 edition focuses on the urgency of combatting racism and racial discrimination, 75 years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
Also, Executive Director, Centre for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD), David Anyaele, has called for an end to racial discrimination against the disability community.
He revealed that people with disabilities suffer racial discrimination in different folds, while trying to access medical services, education, trying to secure social economic protections within the communities.
“It becomes imperative that when issues of discrimination and race are being discussed, its implications on people with disabilities are highlighted.
“People with disabilities may keep on suffering discriminations, not just by reason of their disabilities, but also by reason of their ethnic nationality or skin colour in our communities and where we stay,” Anyaele added.
He, therefore, urged organisations to begin understanding drivers of non-participation, non-visibility, non-availability of people with disabilities in an environment that is characterised by race or ethnic groups that they do not belong to.
