Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Narrator: Thank you for listening to Dialogues on Democracy, I'm Joseph Marcus. As IFES
continues to be a leader in political access for persons with disabilities, I met with
Virginia Atkinson, IFES' Disability-Inclusion officer
Virginia Atkinson: IFES's approach is that disability is a result of a person's interaction
with their environment, so rather than viewing people with disabilities as the object of
charity or um, approaching it from a medical perspective, we believe that people with
disabilities have equal rights as other citizens. Narrator: For the podcast, Virginia interviewed
Chris Donn, IFES' AGENDA project manager and Yusdiana, AGENDA's disability Rights
Advisor from the Indonesian Disabled Persons Organization to discuss the specific issues
and solutions to overcome barriers to political participation.
VA: Hi Chris, hi Yusdiana. Thanks for taking the time to speak with us today. Are there
are any common barriers that people with disabilities across Southeast Indonesia face?
Chris Donn: There's a lot of common barriers, uh, across the region, not enough data related
to disability numbers, so that is a problem for the advocacy of disability and civil society
community but also if you want to make polling station more accessible there is no information
really being collected to show which polling station has persons with ummm a physical disability
or wheelchair use on their voters list. In a country like Indonesia, 460,000 polling
stations you cannot just go build ramps for every polling station to make it accessible
for wheelchair users. A lot of them don't have an ID card or a passport which is the
main document, uh, a person in the region needs to register, so which basically excludes
them from the very beginning of the election process.
VA: Can you tell us a little bit about the challenges that EMBs face to increasing access
to people with disabilities and give us some ideas on how EMBs can over come those barriers?
CD: I believe the challenges vary from country to country. ummm, the lack of experience and
capacity and awareness of decision-makers within the election management body is certainly
a big issue and the law vary from country to county. Election Management bodies need
to make sure that they interpret the laws in a way that makes an election as accessible
as possible given the existing resources. I also think EMBs need to reach out more to
their local civil society and disability community to work together on solutions.
VA: Can you tell us about the barriers that people with disabilities face to participating
in political life in Indonesia. Yusdiana: When a person with disabilities
has to cast their ballot or run for candidacy they do not have equal access as others. The law
that we have now having lack of some rights because the law only focuses on for example
educations, employment, and health, but not talking yet about other rights for example
political participation. Many polling stations are not accessible for persons with disabilities
who use assistive devices. The poll workers, I mean does not have the knowledge on how
to assist person with disabilities.
VA: so you have mentioned a few of the barriers, can you tell us a little bit about any success
stories in the region that really stand out as doing a good job on including people with
disabilities in the political process? Yusdiana: The ASEAN Human Rights Declaration
has two article really mentioning the rights of persons with disabilities, can be the basis
for persons with disabilities in the region to ask for fulfillment of their rights and
as a protection from ASEAN member states. CD: Probably the role model in the region
was certinaly the Philippines, where regulations from the EMB side made it easier for persons
with disabilities to register to vote. They have set up to 60 voter registration centers
for example in shopping malls which are usual the most accessible public spaces in the region.
VA: How has AGENDA succeeded in trying to eliminate some of these barriers?
CD: AGENDA is the first regional network anywhere in the world on disability access.
It is currently in 7 counties, 12 organizations the idea behind AGENDA is that the knowledge
and capacity of disability and civil society organizations is transfer to strengthen the advocacy
power of involved partners. Yusdiana: And AGENDA enhance the work because
I see AGENA is a place for DPOs. More confidence of DPOs talking with EMBs and other Stakeholders
in their respective country. We see that this research can be used to get more idea how
countries have implemented specific rights. It will be the first time that research focus
on the rights of persons with disabilities especially on political rights. AGENDA has
been very active in the development of ASEAN Human Rights Declaration. Now we are still continuing the
collaboration especially because we have a plan to do a raising awareness of persons
with disabilities on these declarations. VA: What are your future plans for AGENDA?
CD: it is extremely important that we allow the network to strengthen itself, to build
the capacity of our particiapating organizations but it also very important to also monitor
more elections in the region, using this data to feed into an index which should be the
outcome of the project in hopefully two years from now, that will allow us to basically
identify how accessable elections are in the countries in the region
Yusdiana: we want to establish a disability committee that we propose to be coordinated
under the president of Indonesia. Narrator: For more information on IFES'work,
AGENDA, and other dialoges on democracy please visit our website. www.IFES.org