South Africa CRPD Committee Shadow Report Submission

Submission by: Cape Mental Health, Centre for Human Rights at The University of Pretoria, Epilepsy South Africa, Khuluma Family Counselling, Lawyers for Human Rights, Port Elizabeth Mental Health, SA Federation for Mental Health, The Teddy Bear Clinic for Abused Children, and Women Enabled International

July 31, 2018

Executive Summary:

This submission describes human rights violations against women and girls with disabilities in South Africa. These violations include failure to take all appropriate measures to ensure the full development, advancement, and empowerment of women and girls with disabilities or affirmative measures to address discrimination; inaccessible justice systems and procedures; lack of accessible gender-based violence services and other supports and services for women and girls with disabilities and their families and caregivers; institutionalization, violence in institutions, and deficient support and oversight of institutions and other facilities for persons with disabilities; violations of women with disabilities’ right to make their own reproductive choices and their right to legal capacity; lack of comprehensive sexuality education and discriminatory attitudes of healthcare providers; and lack of data collection disaggregated by disability and gender.

Through this submission, our organizations make the following key recommendations:

• Take specific measures to address discrimination experienced by women and girls with disabilities and to empower women and girls with disabilities, especially black women with disabilities.
• Improve access to justice for women and girls with disabilities by amending laws and policies and providing training to justice system actors.
• Combat abuse and violence against women and girls with disabilities by ensuring gender-based violence services are accessible and available in disadvantaged areas; by developing inclusive awareness raising programs; by conducting research on the availability of programs and monitoring programs; and by investing in preventative gender-based violence programs.
• Amend laws that compromise South African women with disabilities’ right to make their own reproductive choices and their right to legal capacity.
• Ensure that comprehensive sexuality education programs are available and accessible to women and girls with disabilities.
• Collect data on the issues that most impact women and girls with disabilities and ensure that women and girls with disabilities are included in all data collected about women and in all data collected about persons with disabilities.