Disabled persons demand equal rights in SKN for 2009

By Ryan Haas
Reporter-SKNVibes.com

(l-R)Anthony Mills, VP SNAPD and Rockcliffe Bowen President of SNAPD

In few places are those challenges more prevalent than St. Kitts-Nevis Anthony Mills, Vice President of SNAPD, told SKNVibes in an exclusive interview.

“What we as an association are trying to do is to make sure that… people with disabilities would be included and enjoy the same opportunities as everybody else,” he said.

Opportunities often denied to disabled persons within St. Kitts-Nevis include comfortable access to streets, sidewalks and buildings, job opportunities and chances for educational training. Mills said that this is generally because the human rights of disabled persons rarely come into consideration by the general public and government.

“The concept nowadays of disabled persons is the charity type of thing, and what we are trying to produce is a different society in which you see me as a person with a disability as your equal instead of looking at me like somebody who needs charity. Sometimes I might need help, but you have to give me the opportunity to do it myself as well.”  ~~Adz:Right~~

Only in recent times have the human rights of disabled persons begun making progress on the international scale, with the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons Living with Disabilities coming into full effect on May 3 of this year.

While the Convention has 139 countries signed on to it, with 41 of those ratifying, St. Kitts-Nevis has chosen not to sign. Mills said his organization hopes to change this fact in 2009 by bringing disabled persons out of the shadowy background of society.

“It is only after they start looking at these issues as human rights issues that things will begin to change. Typically persons living with disabilities in the Federation have stood back and been left behind, but it is time for us to change that.

“I mean, how can you say you are developing a country when the greatest resource for any country is the human resource and we are leaving a large segment of that behind by not giving them equal opportunities?” Mills asked.

Though SNAPD’s goals may seem to only serve the disabled community, Mills said it is really society as a whole that stands to benefit from equal opportunity rights.

“By empowering persons with disabilities you are affecting the whole country because persons being dependent on family, friends and government in some way are going to end up being a burden. We are trying to go out there and earn our own living, but without the ramps, the Braille books in the library, sign interpreters for the kids and so on it makes it hard. That is all we are trying to achieve.”

Helping persons living with disabilities does not come down to a mere money issue, however. Rockcliffe Bowen, President of SNAPD, said that engrained societal mindsets continue to prevent tasks as simple as building a ramp to the McKnight Community Center.

“We approached the Minister responsible for Public Works (Hon. Earl Asim Martin). We discussed it with the Deputy Prime Minister (Hon. Sam Condor),” he said. “I went as far one time as to ask him for just the permission to build the ramp. We would find the materials and man power to make it accessible, and up to now nobody has gotten back to us. It just seems like it is falling on deaf ears.”

Both men said that SNAPD is willing to accept its share of the blame when it comes to not getting the message of persons with disabilities out to the public, but added that they plan to change this in 2009 by organizing more visits to schools, appearances in the media and general presence in the public light.

“You can’t just automatically assume that because a person is disabled they are unable,” Mills said, noting that disabilities will only continue to affect more and more persons in the Federation as the overall population continues to live longer.