Our Progress Towards Zero Discrimination
Across the world, there are 130 laws that discriminate on the grounds of leprosy.
Many of these laws are in India, a legacy of colonial era regulations. The discriminatory laws in India are all under challenge in a Public Interest Litigation being heard in the Supreme Court of India. Our hope is that this will lead to all of these laws being repealed.
At the CRPD Conference in 2023 (the UN's annual disability rights conference), The Leprosy Mission also began a positive dialogue with the Government of Malta about repealing a discriminatory law that remained on their statue books. This conversation was followed on into 2024 and the law was repealed in July 2024.
The We Are Able! (WAA!) project is run across six African countries and is led by a consortium of Dutch NGO partners and African-based civil society organisations. The aim is to strengthen the position of people with disabilities in their societies by showing that they are valuable and indispensable community members.
The project is an example of best practice and has three pathways:
Pathway 1: community mobilisation and raising awareness among citizens
Pathway 2: Strengthening Organisations of Persons with Disabilities and Civil Society Organisations
Pathway 3: Engaging local and national public authorities in a dialogue on the food security of persons with disability
Through these pathways, the We Are Able! project has had a big impact.
A total of 83,097 individuals participated in the project in 2023 and the total of indirect beneficiaries is estimated at 330,000.
The efforts of the programme to empower local actors has meant that 82% of OPD representatives say their influence within the programme has increased over the last two years.
We recognise that Organisations of Persons Affected by Leprosy (OPLs) are a crucial partner in the fight to defeat leprosy.
They have the lived experience of leprosy that can improve our understanding of the health, psychological and social determinants of the disease, supporting us to address these more effectively and holistically.
These organisations also have networks and trust in communities that allow us to reach more and more people with our work to end leprosy discrimination. Our work is more effective when we work in partnership with OPLs.
With this in mind, we work to support the strengthening of OPLs. We support the legal recognition, organisational growth, advocacy capacity and independence of these bodies. We are also committed to intentionally and actively engaging with them in all aspects of our work.
Our collaboration extends to more than 10 organisations across Asia and Africa.
In 2023, this partnership took a variety of forms, most notably in a consultation period with OPLs regarding The Leprosy Mission’s new global strategy. We want this strategy to address the needs of persons affected by leprosy, and so a global-level consultation with OPL leaders was conducted. Their feedback on our plans for the years ahead have been vital.
Photo Credit: Tom Bradley
In 2023, Ana Ivonia spoke at the United Nations’ CRPD Conference. This conference is the UN’s annual disability rights conference on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability. Ana Ivonia, a young woman from Timor-Leste, gave a short speech that was raw and powerful.
At a round table discussion about reaching underrepresented groups of persons with disability, Ana Ivonia represented a cross section of young people, women, persons affected by leprosy, persons affected by Neglected Tropical Diseases, and individuals from small states. Her speech was punctuated by tears and greeted by rapturous applause.
In 2023, The Leprosy Mission Nigeria submitted a report to the UN’s Human Rights Council as a part of their Universal Periodic Review process. This process sees the Council review the human rights situation of each UN country every four years.
TLM Nigeria’s report provided the Council with key information about the human rights challenges that persons affected by leprosy face in Nigeria. The report contained recommendations about how the Government of Nigeria can improve this situation ahead of the next round of reporting.
For six years, persons affected by leprosy benefitted from the work of a UN Special Rapporteur dedicated specifically to addressing the discrimination that surrounds leprosy. Alice Cruz has been in position for all of those six years.
In 2023, this mandate was up for renewal and it was not a guarantee that this would happen. The Leprosy Mission engaged in advocacy efforts alongside a number of other leprosy organisations to encourage UN decision makers to renew the mandate.
Thankfully, the mandate was renewed for a further term of three years and the new Special Rapporteur, Beatriz Miranda, is currently in post, reporting on leprosy discrimination.
