‘I nearly lost my work’: chance encounters, legal empowerment and the struggle for disability rights in Ghana

Abstract

This article uses a case study from Ghana to argue that rights-based legal instruments are important but insufficient steps towards securing disability rights in non-western societies. Despite Ghana’s implementation of a Disability Act and ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a grassroots perspective shows that legislation and the model of legal empowerment will not automatically produce equal access to human rights. The paper will present this argument through a case study of an individual who became disabled in 2008 and struggled for four years to secure his rights to healthcare and employment. I also argue that the case has a wider significance for disability rights in Ghana and beyond.

Keywords:

• disability rights
• case study
• empowerment
• employment
• Ghana
• patronage

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Rhoda Howard-Hassman for reading this manuscript thoroughly and offering valuable comments, as well as Merridy Cox Bradley and two anonymous readers from Disability and Society.