Sierra Leone has praised the efforts of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission for its commitment to promoting the rights of disabled people, particularly disabled children.
On behalf of Sierra Leone’s Minister of Social Welfare, Ms Melrose Karminty, the Acting Director of Social and Religious Affairs, John Conteh, thanked the regional organization for its program to provide assistive devices for disabled children in West Africa.
Opening the program’s advocacy and awareness-raising workshop in Freetown, Sierra Leone, on Friday March 28, 2025, Mr. Conteh praised the ECOWAS Commission’s initiative to promote the inclusion of disabled children in Sierra Leone.“The ECOWAS program for the provision of assistive devices to disabled children in West Africa is directly linked to our social inclusion strategies,” said John Conteh.
According to Dr Alves D’almada Jorge Fernando, Senior Program Officer for Social Affairs at the ECOWAS Commission, Africa is home to some 80 million people with disabilities, who face multiple challenges such as stigmatization, marginalization and discrimination.
He recalled the regional initiatives in favor of people with disabilities, such as the validation and adoption of the ECOWAS Action Plan for the Social Inclusion of People with Disabilities, underlining that this plan aims to encourage ECOWAS member states to draw up and implement laws and policies favoring the inclusion of these people.
“We welcome this historic event, a first among all the Regional Economic Communities on the African continent. With the adoption of this Action Plan for the inclusion of people with disabilities, we are taking a further step towards the realization of Vision 2050, thus contributing to the construction of an ECOWAS of peoples, a more social ECOWAS”, said Dr. Alves D’almada Jorge Fernando.
He recalled the aim of the meeting, which was to examine and validate the terms of reference for the supply of assistive devices to disabled children in Sierra Leone.
According to a study by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), of the nearly 240 million disabled children in the world, around 15% of children aged 0-17 suffer from a disability in West and Central Africa.
The President of the Sierra Leone Union of Disabled Persons (SLUDI), Joseph Alieu Kamara, expressed his deep gratitude to the ECOWAS Commission for its support for disabled people in general, and disabled Sierra Leonean children in particular.
Like other children, disabled children also have the right to an adequate education, social well-being and self-fulfilment, he stressed. To this end, Mr. Kamara called for technical assistance for disabled children in Sierra Leone.
Like Mr. Kamara, Sightsavers’ Sierra Leone Country Manager, Tiangay Gondoe, also thanked and expressed her support for ECOWAS’s program to provide assistive devices for disabled children in West Africa.
The aim of this program is to promote the full participation of children with disabilities, as well as to strengthen their social inclusion and empowerment in the ECOWAS region.
Sierra Leone is the 4th member state to benefit from this program, the other three being Nigeria, Togo and Benin. Guinea-Bissau will be the next member state to benefit from this program.
At a cost of three hundred thousand (300,000) US dollars for its 2nd phase, this program aims to provide functional appliances and accessories to disabled children in the community, in order to promote their social inclusion and reduce their vulnerability.
Prior to the workshop, the Sierra Leone Minister of Social Protection, Ms Melrose Karminty, and the ECOWAS Resident Representative in Sierra Leone, Harouna Moussa, were briefed by the ECOWAS Commission delegation on the program.
In addition to Dr Alves D’almada Jorge Fernando, the delegation included Ms Abimbola Oyelo-hunnu and Liberor Doscof Aho, respectively in charge of Social Development and Communication at the ECOWAS Commission.
