‘I nearly lost my work’: chance encounters, legal empowerment and the struggle for disability rights in Ghana

Abstract

This article uses a case study from Ghana to argue that rights-based legal instruments are important but insufficient steps towards securing disability rights in non-western societies. Despite Ghana's implementation of a Disability Act and ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a grassroots perspective shows that legislation and the model of legal empowerment will not automatically produce equal access to human rights. The paper will present this argument through a case study of an individual who became disabled in 2008 and struggled for four years to secure his rights to healthcare and employment. I also argue that the case has a wider significance for disability rights in Ghana and beyond.

Exposing the protected: Ghana’s disability laws and the rights of disabled people

“…The enforcement of the laws in their current form sometimes requires disabled people to depend on the magnanimity of officials, who by their own discretion, rather than on the basis of the law, may decide to assist disabled people in their pursuit of remedial action. Disabled people who decide to challenge the discrimination they face by advocating for themselves are sometimes compelled to submit themselves to corrupt practices by making several official and unofficial payments at so many levels even with officialdom in the justice system, insurance and healthcare before getting what is due them (Grischow 2015). Failure to do this can mean unnecessary prolonged delays in the quest for justice and services or an outright forfeiture of whatever remediation that is being sought by the disabled person.…”

‘The food is not enough’: disability and food aid technologies in a Ugandan refugee settlement

“…Specifically, in regard to disability, anthropologists have contrasted Western values of independence and equality with hierarchical and interdependent relations of patronage (Devlieger 2018: 7; see also Grischow 2015). Some, however, have pointed to the possibility of equality within these hierarchical relations (Englund 2011;Durham 1995).…”

Disablity

“…Ethnographic case studies demonstrate that access to (inter)national disability rights often intersects with local models of patronage (Grischow 2015), racial politics (Puar 2017), and corporate social responsibility (Friedner 2015). Sometimes, rights activism may have unintended consequences.…”