Speakers
Description
Ghana became the 119th country in the world to ratify United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). Through this ratification, Ghana accepted to ensure that Ghanaians experiencing disability will be treated as equal citizens with equal rights to enable them to flourish. Specifically, Article 30.5 of the UNCRPD discusses rights of persons with disability and the requirement of access to sports and physical activity. To date there has been limited research on disability sport and physical activity rights in Africa as a whole and Ghana specifically. Barriers facing persons who experience disability (PWED) to participate in physical activity are numerous. One of the difficulties is that sport and physical activity are globally perceived as superfluous to basic wellbeing particularly when the population of PWED face fundamental barriers to good sanitation and transportation. If these basic needs are present the barriers still include lack of awareness on the part of the larger society as to how to involve PWED in teams adequately; lack of opportunities and programmes for training and competition; few accessible facilities due to physical barriers; and limited information on and access to resources. As a result, this paper aims to explore rights of PWED in the Ghanian context to physical activity and sports by utilising Bourdieuian practice theory and focusing on policy adaptation and implementation addressing the rights of this marginalised population.
