The Right to Education for Children with Autism in Ethiopia: The Legal and Policy Framework and its Implementation in Addis Ababa
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Date
2015-01-01
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The right to education is recognized under major international human rights instruments including the UDHR, ICESCR, CRC, CRPD and regional instruments ratified by Ethiopia. According to the instruments, the right to education encompasses fours essential features: availability, accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability. It also involves inclusive education, prohibit discrimination, and require states to provide accessible, quality education tailored to individual needs, ensuring that children with disabilities are not excluded from educational opportunities.
This study explores the legal and policy and framework of the right to education of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and its implementation in Addis Ababa. Even if the framing of the right to education under the FDRE Constitution is in the form obligation to the state as one of the social services, and hence making it difficult to understand the content and scope of the right, it can be understood from the international instruments ratified by Ethiopia by virtue of Article 9(4) and 13(2) of the Constitution. Moreover, the educational policies and strategies adopted by the Ministry of Education explicitly recognize education as a right.
The right to education of children with ASD faces legal and policy gaps as well as implementation gaps. The data of the Ministry of Education from last indicates that the national gross enrollment ratio of special needs education is 3.4% while that of Addis Ababa is 26.8%. The data reveals the remaining students who should haven enrolled to the special need education are either not enrolled or not recorded as such. The data collected under this study also indicate that parents of children with ASD face numerous challenges in sending their children to school and make them obtain quality education. The support services are also underfunded and entangled by lack of experts, high class size, lack proper monitoring of schools by regulatory bodies, lack awareness among the teachers, school leaders and parents, etc. As a way out, the study recommends legal and policy reforms which consider the learning difficulties of children with ASD. The study employed both doctrinal and empirical methods to explore the right to education of children with ASD. In doing so, it has used primary data such as interviews and questionnaire to collect data and used both qualitative and quantitative methods
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Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and its implementation in Addis Ababa