Challenges at the top of the world

The two years since Disability Now first featured Nepal in our World View section has been an exciting and challenging time for disabled people in the world's newest republic. Nepalese disability activist Maheshwar Ghimire (pictured right) brings us up to date on progress made and barriers still to be faced

Nepal ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities in February 2010. This was a huge success. For us the door is open now but it will mean a lot of monitoring and we need to remake lots of domestic laws.

Our disabled people's organisation mostly deals with social issues that reflect the attitudes of society. We campaign on law enforcement by taking public interest litigations on behalf of disabled people. It's like a form of legal aid.

For instance, buried in the legislation on access to education, we discovered that no disabled people should have to pay fees for education. No one knew about this: it was kept in the cupboard. We took a case to court and after two and a half years the Supreme Court decided disabled people are entitled to free education.

We also won the case against detaining people with mental health issues in jail. These people had committed no crime. We won this in 2008. Again it took two and a half years.

If a Nepalese woman becomes disabled after getting married her husband can then take a second wife. In one case the first wife was forced to leave her home and live in a hostel because of domestic violence. We took the case and the court, awarded her property rights she was entitled to.

Disabled people can often be denied their property rights. If they inherit land or a house their family can say: "You don't need it all. After all you aren't married and we'll take care of you." Two months ago we won a case. A deaf woman who was unmarried was being denied her property rights by her brothers but in court the verdict went her way.

Nepal is one of the few countries in Asia to abolish the death penalty and has ruled in favour of same-sex marriage. When a draft paper on minority groups excluded lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) people and disabled people, we joined together to demonstrate.

There is still no access to public spaces. The Government has introduced a building code but all we can do if we find a new building is inaccessible is report it. The Government is trying to make their offices accessible but private companies are only interested in profit.

Access to public transport is also very poor as it's run by the private sector.

Our geography is very challenging. We're on the top of the world. Some districts can only be reached by seven or eight days of walking. Mountain villages have very poor facilities so often disabled people have to leave their villages and come to urban areas. There is a displacement of disabled people.

Most secondary school students walk for an hour to get to school. This means many disabled students are excluded.

Another big challenge is the caste system. If a disabled person is of a low caste they face double discrimination.

There's no reliable data on the number of disabled people in Nepal as families are not willing to admit they have a disabled family member: it's a social prestige issue. In preparation for the 2011 census we're broadcasting spots on community radio stations on the importance of counting disabled people in the census. The Government has just started a very nominal monthly allowance for disabled people so hopefully that will encourage people to identify themselves as disabled in the census. We're also persuading the census enumerators not to ignore disabled people in the count.

We have limited capacity so we're trying to hand over knowledge to smaller organisations. Our ultimate aim is to develop the capacity of local disabled people's organisations.

The Disabled Human Rights Centre is in a crucial position as Nepal's new constitution is being made. We're trying to get the voices of disabled people to the government body by using theatre as a tool. Using street theatre to interact with large groups of people from different castes speaking different languages saves on the cost of communicating with lots of small groups.

Disabled people from all over Nepal come to Katmandu to do two weeks of theatre training and then they go back to their communities. We use the ideas of Augusto Boal: a play is stopped and the audience is asked what should happen next. In this way we're collecting ideas on legal issues and how to tackle discrimination. It's almost like legislative theatre.

We have 9,000 written suggestions of what should go in the constitution, law, policies and services. When the first draft of the constitution comes out, we'll go back and ask disabled people what they think. It might be fantastic but enforcement might be weak.

Currently there is political deadlock until issues are resolved between the state and the last of the Maoist combatants who have opposed the Government.

Fingers crossed, we should have the first draft of the constitution next year.

We face many challenges but we have great opportunities. We're at the very very beginning.

- Maheshwar Ghimire was talking to Kelly Mullan