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{
"id": 1511588,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1511588/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mathare, ODM",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Anthony Oluoch",
"speaker": null,
"content": "needs to be considered here is one that would align itself with Article 100 of the Constitution on the rights of persons with disabilities to representation and I think this is very crucial, even as we look at other rights. We have looked at the rights here that align to issues of inclusion in accordance with Article 10, equality and equalisation in line with Article 27, human dignity in line with Article 28, the right to privacy incorporated in line with Article 31 and other rights including Article 54. So, it is important then that we also look at their rights to representation. As I was looking at this, I also looked at Clause 11 of the Bill itself that talks about children and persons with disabilities. I also needed to make this point before I go to my main points of the need to classify what constitutes disability. Some people think about disability in terms of the severe disability that we know in terms of persons missing a leg or limping or having no eye or persons with albinism. However, I think it is important both at the interpretation and even at the clause, especially the one dealing with children, that we classify various kinds of disability that would otherwise go unnoticed. I have in mind, for example, things like autism. This needs to be clearly defined under the interpretation and so that in Clause 11, when you are talking about children with disabilities, it needs to be clearly indicated how we deal and protect these children, how we teach them and how we handle them both at home and at school. The other mild disabilities such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, otherwise referred to as (ADHD), would otherwise go unnoticed. We look at these children as probably just naughty, not well brought up. These are small disorders which ought to be defined and taken care of, so that even as our teachers teach in school, units are provided to empower them to deal with this. The other small sort of disabilities that would also go unnoticed would be Oppositional Defiant Disorder, also known as ODD. I have already mentioned autism. The one that interests me and I have of late been doing a lot of reading on, is a condition called dyslexia. What is dyslexia? A dyslexic is a person whose mind or brain operates differently. There are parts of the brain that helps you to recognise sound, shape and numbers. When these parts of the brain are dysfunctional or not operating at 100 per cent, you then find a person with a disorder that is called dyslexia. Hon. Temporary Speaker, let me bring to your attention world renowned persons who would otherwise not have been known had there not been some scientific discoveries. One of them was Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein was a world-renowned scientist and a Nobel Prize winner. In his early childhood, he was a slow learner, slow at speech, and eventually it was discovered that this was a dyslexic child. Another person was Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison is a very important and interesting case. He is the inventor of the light bulb as we know it. Teachers threw out this child for having tried incessantly to teach him and gave up. They called his mother and said, ‘come and take your child. Your child is too dumb to learn.’ The mother of Thomas Edison came and picked her child, and with tears in her eyes said, ‘I will teach my child, my child is not too dumb to learn.’ Albert Einstein said, “If you judge a fish by its inability to climb a wall, it will spend the entirety of its life thinking that it was not able to do anything.” I am particularly interested in Clause 11 of the Bill, especially where we are able to define and categorise distinctly and succinctly the various small disabilities that affect our children, which we do not appreciate until it is very late. I sometimes think that I was dyslexic when I was a child. I ask myself sometimes why I could not appreciate numbers. Hon. Temporary Speaker, we shared the same school or college somewhere along the way. If you had beaten me and turned me upside down, I would not learn mathematics. I knew zero about numbers, but I knew many other things and I ended up being a lawyer. As I support this Bill, I want us to look at the clauses that would be able to enrich it, and also to look at the various ways in which it has been able to enhance inclusion, in which it"
}