International human rights organization Human Rights Watch published a report «Insisting on Inclusion: Institutionalization and Barriers to Education for Children with Disabilities in Kyrgyzstan» on International Human Rights Day.
It notes that children with disabilities are often denied high-quality inclusive education in Kyrgyzstan.
«Children with disabilities are subject to discriminatory government evaluations that often lead to segregation in special schools or at home. Kyrgyzstan ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in 2019,» the organization says.
«The Kyrgyz government has committed to guaranteeing access to inclusive education, meaning that children with disabilities should be able to study in mainstream schools in the communities where they live,» said Laura Mills, researcher at Human Rights Watch and the report’s author. «However, the government still needs to turn this pledge into a reality for children across the country.»
The organization interviewed 111 people between October 2019 and July 2020, including children and young adults with disabilities, teachers and staff at residential institutions and special schools, parents, and disability rights activists and also visited six residential institutions and schools for children with disabilities in four regions.
The institutions had insufficient personnel to care for children with disabilities, resulting in neglect or lack of individualized attention. Children were segregated according to disability, which is discriminatory.
The HRW also documented that institution staff regularly use psychotropic drugs or forced psychiatric hospitalization to control children’s behavior and punish them. A doctor at an institution for children with disabilities described sending a boy to a psychiatric hospital because the institution staff were unhappy with the boy’s behavior.
Since 2012, the Kyrgyz government has pledged to close 17 residential institutions for children, including three for children with disabilities. But 3,000 children with disabilities remain in institutions, and the government has closed only one residential special school.
The organization stresses that limited access for children with disabilities to mainstream schools is discriminatory and violates Kyrgyz and international law.
