Abstract
International conventions acknowledge the right of refugees and of disabled people to access quality inclusive education. Both groups struggle to assert this right, particularly in the Global South, where educational access may be hindered by system constraints, resource limitations and negative attitudes. Our concern is the intersectional and compounding effect of being a disabled refugee in Sub-Saharan Africa. Disabled refugees have been invisible in policy and service provision, reliable data is very limited, and there has been little research into their experiences of educational inclusion and exclusion. This article makes the case for research to address this gap. Three country contexts (South Africa, Zimbabwe and Uganda) are presented to illustrate the multi-layered barriers and challenges to realizing the rights for disabled refugees in educational policy and practice. These three countries host refugees who have fled civil unrest and military conflict, economic collapse and natural disaster, and all have signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. None has available and reliable data about the numbers of disabled refugees, and there is no published research about their access to education. Arguing for an inclusive and intersectional approach and for the importance of place and history, we illustrate the complexity of the challenge. This complexity demands conceptual resources that account for several iterative and mutually constituting factors that may enable or constrain access to education. These include legislation and policy, bureaucracy and resource capacity, schools and educational institutions, and community beliefs and attitudes. We conclude with a call for accurate data to inform policy and enable monitoring and evaluation. We advocate for the realization of the right to education for disabled refugee students and progress towards the realization of quality inclusive education for all.
Highlights
The African Union (AU) made 2019 the year of “Refugees, returnees and internally displaced persons” in recognition of the fact that over a third of the world’s displaced persons are in Africa (African Union [AU], 2019)
We review the findings from the body of international literature on education for disabled refugees, showing the lacuna in work about Africa, and make the case for inclusive education to be used to frame this issue
We describe three sub-Saharan African countries in terms of the particular challenges that disabled refugees might experience in accessing quality, inclusive education
Summary
The African Union (AU) made 2019 the year of “Refugees, returnees and internally displaced persons” in recognition of the fact that over a third of the world’s displaced persons are in Africa (African Union [AU], 2019). There is a danger that the experiences of disabled refugee students become homogenized in efforts to understand the barriers they may face to accessing quality, inclusive education While it is clear from the research and policies mentioned above that there are common issues and concerns, each context has its own histories and geographies of educational exclusion, and these will impact disabled refugees differently. These barriers are listed by the Human Rights Watch report and are supported by other research [see, for example, Chataika et al (2012) and McKenzie et al (2018)] They include: discrimination in accessing education as schools decide whether they are willing to accept students with disabilities; discriminatory physical and attitudinal barriers (including bullying), and lack of reasonable accommodations; discriminatory fees and expenses, including the costs of class assistants, transport and boarding; violence, abuse and neglect; low quality education, impacted by inadequate teacher education; and lack of preparation for life after schooling. Insights gained from these experiences would potentially identify policy gaps and policy subversions, and indicate contextually relevant practices that can be adopted and strengthened to secure educational access and success
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