Benin – The Centre for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD) has trained Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) on Rights Advocacy and Advocacy Action Plan in Benin.
The theme of the training was promoting inclusive economic opportunities and community resilience for Persons with Disabilities.
The workshop is being carried out in collaboration with Project Enable Africa, with support from the US – Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund.
Speaking during the training, the Acting Director, CCD, Mr Godwin Unumeri, said the training was organized to build the capacity of PWDs to be economically resilient to identify advocacy issues.
Unumeri noted that the training would build their capacity to understand the content of advocacy, advocate in a corporate manner and insist on their rights using disabilities models to avoid distractions.
He said the training would expose participants to know that rights based advocacy was an advocacy for the rights of PWDs on the understanding that persons with disabilities were entitled to their rights as contained in the national disabilities law.
Speaking on the non implementation of the PWDs law in Edo, Unumeri said the PWDs in Edo have not advocated enough to push for its implementation.
“We came here with the mind set that Edo does not have a law that guarantees the rights of the PWDs in the state.
“We only just got to know from them now that a law has been passed to that effect but has not been implemented in the state.
“What I can say is that the people who advocated for the passage just sat down and watched since after the passage of the law.
“Today’s workshop will expose them to the knowledge of advocacy that will help them push issues in the disability law that have been passed and help them articulate themselves in going about the advocacy,” he said.
According to him, PWDs have the material and human resources within themselves that they are not utilizing.
“So this training will help the various disability clusters to know that they need to work together to achieve their advocacy objectives,” he said.
Speaking on the topic, “Introduction to Advocacy and Advocacy Action Plan”, Unumeri urged participants to always prepare an advocacy action plan before embarking on advocacy
He added that preparing advocacy action plan would help PWDs foster accountability and coordination among team members.
Participants were also taken through Understanding Disabilities Rights and Advocacy.
