THE amendments that President Abdel Fattah El Sisi has recently endorsed to the provisions of the 2020 law on establishing a fund to support disability challengers reassert the state’s orientation to ensure the socio-economic empowerment of differently-abled citizens and promote their integration into all walks of societal life. The establishment of a 14-member board of trustees to be chaired by the president of the republic represents a key aspects of those amendments since it consolidates the institutional character of the state’s care for differently-abled citizens and signals the highest-level political keenness on furthering the state’s overall care to disability challengers. Also of notable significance has been the renaming of the fund as Fund for Supporting the Differently-Abled, in effect underscoring the state’s eagerness to entitle this segment of the society to the entire rights and services that the state extends to all citizens. Furthermore, the amendments specifically entrust the fund with the task of enhancing health, employment and educational support to persons with disability. Also of special significance in this connection is the fund’s role in encouraging persons with disabilities to express their talents and skills in arts, culture, science and sports. Such encouragement augments the state’s vision on integrating the differently-abled citizens into the entire spectrum of social, economic and cultural activities.
Over the past years, the state has initiated a series of measures to assert and enhance the full rights of disability challengers to receive the kind and extent of support deemed necessary for their social and economic empowerment as well as for getting access to the diverse services that the state offers to citizens. A central step in this direction has been the launch of the Presidential Initiative for Supporting and Empowering Disability Challengers that provided, inter alia, for developing 3,000 special education schools, qualifying the necessary number of teachers, establishing specialised integration centres, designing a chain of software and apps to make life smoother for persons with disabilities and designating special healthcare units to offer e-medical services to disability challengers. Fostering this drive, the recently enacted amendments entitle the fund to encourage and support disability challengers in launching micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and to co-operate with all bodies concerned in making job opportunities available to persons with disability. These two tasks represent a solid step forward in the state’s drive to ensure the social and economic empowerment of persons with disabilities.
Viewed in combination, these tasks to be delivered by such a high-powered apparatus reflect a genuine and firm orientation on the part of the state to assert the right of disability challengers to enjoy socio-economic empowerment. Also pointing to this orientation is the amendments’ stipulation for the fund to oversee the arrangement of programmes and seminars to spread societal awareness of the rights and requirements of persons with disability. Such awareness is indeed pivotal in establishing wide public support for the state’s efforts to promote the overall rights of the segment of disability challengers as a partner in the life and development of the country.
