By Joan Nwagwu
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has called for the inclusion of People with Disabilities (PWDs) in various policies to enhance social justice in Nigeria.
ILO Country Director for Nigeria, Ms Vanessa Phala, made the call during a meeting in Abuja on Friday to commemorate the World Day for Social Justice.
This year’s theme was: “Advancing Social Justice and Inclusion for People with Disabilities.”
Phala emphasised that increasing access to social justice for people with disabilities was essential, as it should be inclusive rather than exclusive.
According to her, social justice involves implementing actions and policies that promote and facilitate equal access to opportunities for everyone.
“We have converge here, to commemorate the World Social Justice day, to have this inclusive conversation and create a space, a dialogue, a platform for PWDs to come and share some of their insights.
She said they also converge to explore ways to improve our efforts in ensuring that social justice was inclusive and accessible to everyone.
“I believe that as we move forward, we now have a network of persons with disabilities that we must actively integrate into our activities.”
Phala therefore said that the ILO would ensure that no one would be left behind as it concerned access to social justice.
Mr. Emmanuel Igbinosun, Director of Productivity Measurement and Labour Standards at the Ministry of Labour and Employment, sa6 in his address that statistics indicated there were between 29 and 30 million people living with disabilities in Nigeria.
He noted that this figure was significant, representing over 12.5 per cent of the country’s population.
According to him, the ministry will continue to collaborate with its tripartite partners and the ILO to achieve social justice for PWDs in the country.
“The Decent Work Country’s document is a strategic framework of the ILO’s intervention in Nigeria.
“It is in alignment with Nigeria economic realities and we are hoping that in this implementation of the Decent Work Country Three, we will collaborate more with our partners,”he said.
Ms Patience Dikson, one of the PWDs said that there was need for synergy between government, employers of labour to ensure social inclusion of PWDs in their work.
According to her, we will want many people and organisations to start talking about social inclusion of PWDs and also putting it in their work.
“We want to have inclusion policies, we want to have policy implementation of advancing issues for people with disabilities,’she said.
Dikson also advocated for a review of the disability law, emphasising the need for it to be more inclusive.
She added that “we are advocating for disability review of the law because it doesn’t actually reference women with disability. It’s all about persons with disability.
“There are peculiar issues around women with disability, and also children with disability, elders with disability.
“In fact, it has to be a bit encompassive to also include allies such as family, who has been doing a lot for persons with disabilities.
“So, we have been advocating for this, and I hear that our efforts are yielding results. This will soon be reviewed, which is a great milestone for us. It will help ensure a more inclusive policy or law,” she said..