'I thought my child was a devil'

This isn’t what you expect any parent to say of their own child. However, in many African communities, when the child in question is disabled, this is not unusual. We heard this particular statement from a father at our most recent Parent Support Meeting in Gunjur, The Gambia. But we have heard it before. And it matters – a lot – because it is these persistent and negative attitudes that isolate and disable people with impairments.

The UN Convention is a vision unrealised. Don't celebrate it just yet

It is ten years since the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. A landmark achievement in the international recognition of the rights of disabled people. Yet, in Ngwerere, a dispersed rural community in Zambia close to the capital Lusaka, only an extreme optimist could find evidence of any discernible difference made to the lives of disabled people in those ten years of the UN Convention...