With the International Day for Persons with Disabilities only just two months away, what has come to the fore is that Botswana is failing to embrace persons with disabilities (PWD). Whilst there have been regional censuses and surveys conducted to provide general projections and estimates, the reality is that Botswana and policymakers don’t have a precise picture of how many people with disabilities live in the country, and how they are faring.
Refilwe Serelatheng, who worked in various countries across southern Africa focusing on disability research says it is depressing and disconsolate that Botswana has no shortage of scientific evidence for the effectiveness of interventions for maternal health, malaria and even HIV, but when it comes to disabilities, there is a lack of accurate and comparable data.
Having worked on regional statistics on people with disabilities, she says: “In Botswana it is difficult to establish the effectiveness of interventions aimed at improving the lives of people with disabilities. They are already a marginalised group and the lack of data pushes them further into poverty and prevents them from fully participating in the society.”
Whilst most pundits agree that there is no gold standard measure which exists for people with disabilities, some argue that different measures exist for different purposes, and the use of different measures in different countries makes comparison of prevalence or outcomes difficult.
Statistics show that Batswana children with disabilities are likely to be twice as illiterate compared to those without disabilities. In Botswana in 2017, around 65% of young people with no identified impairment were literate, compared with 39% of those with physical or hearing impairments and 31% of those with mental impairments.
This gives credence to what humanitarian agencies such as United Nations (UN) have said about Botswana that persons with disabilities continue to face barriers to their full inclusion and participation in the life of their communities. “There are disparate and uneven levels of poverty; lack of access to education and health services, lack of employment and under-representation in decision-making and political participation. This is particularly the case for women and girls with disabilities,” a UN report once said about Botswana.
This publication can also confirm that current data and statistics show that persons with disabilities in Botswana are not yet adequately included in the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the SDGs. The problem is aggravated by the fact that Botswana measures disability in different ways compared with other countries.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 SDGs provide a structure to guide countries to the attainment of disability inclusive development. The 2030 Agenda pledges to leave no one behind, including persons with disabilities and other disadvantaged groups, and has recognised disability as a cross-cutting issue, to be considered in the implementation of all of its goals. However the Agenda has 11 indicators explicitly making reference to persons with disabilities, covering access to education and employment, availability of schools sensitive to students with disabilities, inclusion and empowerment of persons with disabilities, accessible transport, accessible public and green spaces, and building capacity of countries to disaggregate data by disability.
But Serelatheng says people with disabilities in Botswana are being left behind in almost all the indicators. “For example girls and women already face gender barriers to education and are more likely to be affected by poverty. Furthermore, the probability of being in poverty rises in households headed by people with disabilities in Botswana. The indicator for employment shows that people with disabilities in Botswana face constraints in employment because of their low level of education and employment rates among 15 to 29 year-olds is under 5% in Botswana. The health indicator shows that most families of persons with disabilities do not have the ability to invest in health and adequate nutrition,” she says.
Better data and analysis is needed in order to address this inequality.
Nametsegang Rangobana who is living with disability says one of the greatest problems she faces is the lack of access to assistive technology which is key to enable independent living. In Botswana such technology is not readily available and is expensive for persons with disabilities. She also says there is need to expedite the deinstitutionalisation of the social, economic and political inclusion of persons with disabilities.
“Many people with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities in this country are not able to vote. Other problems we face include discrimination and stigma on the ground of disability, no access to assistive technology and essential services,” says Rangobana.
Sustainable development for all can only be achieved if persons with disabilities are equally included as both agents and beneficiaries as Botswana strives for a sustainable future. Serelatheng says in an effort to redress this, she is in the process of completing an “evidence gap map” on the effectiveness of interventions to improve the lives of people with disabilities in Botswana.
“Most of the surveys conducted in Botswana are of poor quality because they focus on education whilst leaving behind other equally important issues such as health, empowerment, livelihoods and social inclusion. Persons with disabilities in Botswana are more susceptible to the impact of low quality or inaccessible healthcare services compared to persons without disabilities. Although the UN Flagship Report on Disability and Development 2018 states that women with disabilities are less likely to receive ante- and post-natal care which puts their children at more risk of disability, such information is hardly found in local statistics,” says Serelatheng.
In order to ensure that SDGs have a lasting impact especially on marginalised groups in Botswana, there is need for more collection of disability data. Possibly, there is need for the establishment of national monitoring and evaluation systems that every so often assess issues regarding inclusion of persons with disabilities. With data gaps persisting, the true burden of disability in Botswana remains unclear which constraints the monitoring of children, youths and adults with disabilities in Botswana.
