Nepal: Access to Education for Children with Disabilities

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Pictured here: Five children with intellectual disabilities playing on the classroom floor. A resource class for children with intellectual disabilities at Mahendranagar Secondary School in the far western region of Nepal. The number of students in this class varies from 2 to 15. Human Rights Watch research found that children with disabilities have lower attendance and higher dropout rates than other children due to inadequately trained teachers, lack of appropriate teaching materials, lack of awareness of the right to education among parents, and negative parental attitudes about the learning capabilities of their children, among other factors. © 2011 Shantha Rau Barriga/Human Rights Watch 253376
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Pictured here: An eight-year-old boy with his mother and younger brother outside of their brick home. Sameet, an eight-year-old boy with a possible hearing impairment or intellectual disability, is studying in Class 1 for the third time. The other children in his class are five or six years old. Human Rights Watch found that children with disabilities in mainstream schools repeatedly fail and are more likely to repeat a class. © 2011 Shantha Rau Barriga/Human Rights Watch 253376
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Pictured here: Amman and his mother sitting in front of their home, next to a wooden tricycle. Amman, a 16-year-old boy with physical disabilities, uses his tricycle to get to school. Because the school does not have a toilet that he can use independently, he must refrain from going to the bathroom all day or has to ask another child to run to fetch his mother at their home so she can assist him. © 2011 Shantha Rau Barriga/Human Rights Watch 253376
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Pictured here: A brick school building with two steep steps leading to the classrooms. Few schools in Nepal have an accessible environment for children with disabilities, which in many cases effectively denies these children their right to education. Because the entrance to this mainstream school has steps and no ramp, Amman has to crawl to his classroom. © 2011 Shantha Rau Barriga/Human Rights Watch 253376
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Pictured here: A young woman with a physical disability on one side of her body, dressed in traditional Nepali clothes, tends to her cows in a village outside of Pokhara, Nepal. Balkumari, 21, has a physical disability that limits the movement of one side of her body. Her father would not let her attend a mainstream school because she could not walk there like her siblings. Instead, when she was 11, she began attending a school for children with intellectual disabilities. She told Human Rights Watch, “People in the community said this school was for mentally retarded children, not for a child like me.” © 2011 Shantha Rau Barriga/Human Rights Watch 253376
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Pictured here: A mother with her three children sitting outside their home. Mayakuna is the mother of a six-year-old girl with a physical disability and possible developmental disability who does not attend school. She told Human Rights Watch, “Sometimes I am very angry. I think: why is this type of child with me? I feel that I should give her something to eat so she can die.” Human Rights Watch found that children with disabilities who are not admitted to school often face abuse and neglect because of limited government support for parents of children with disabilities. © 2011 Shantha Rau Barriga/Human Rights Watch 253376
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Pictured here: An empty wheelchair outside of the day care center for 35 children with intellectual and multiple disabilities run by the Resource Center for Rehabilitation and Development, in Bhaktapur, Nepal. Human Rights Watch found that schools are often inadequately staffed, have no flexible curriculum and limited teaching materials, leading to an inferior quality of education for children with disabilities, compared to other children. The government provides minimal special education training only to teachers working in resource classes or special schools. Teachers in mainstream schools do not receive adequate training on how to integrate children with disabilities, thereby undermining the principle of inclusive education. Teachers in day care centers like the one pictured here receive no training from the government. © 2011 Shantha Rau Barriga/Human Rights Watch 253376
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Pictured here: A grass schoolyard and a path leading to a small house with narrow doors where the toilets are located. The Nirmal Bal Vikas School for children with disabilities in Kathmandu, Nepal. Its toilets, located outside the building, are inaccessible for many children with physical disabilities. © 2011 Kyle Knight/Human Rights Watch 253376
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Pictured here: A young boy sitting on the floor of a daycare center, playing with a camera. Suraj, a 9-year-old boy with a physical disability, does not attend school because his parents thought that no school would admit him. He recently started attending a nearby daycare center for children with intellectual disabilities. Our research found that Nepal and its international partners are not doing enough to ensure that children with disabilities are attending school and that the education system is inclusive, accessible, appropriate, and of good quality for children with disabilities. © 2011 Shantha Rau Barriga/Human Rights Watch 253376
Children with disabilities in Nepal face diverse and imposing barriers to getting a basic education. Human Rights Watch has found that schools are physically inaccessible, teachers are inadequately trained, and some children with disabilities are unjustly denied admission to neighborhood schools. Many of these children also experience abuse and neglect at home and in their communities. These barriers result in low attendance and high dropout rates for children with disabilities compared with their non-disabled peers.
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