The Bhutanese Leading the way.
A large batch of Bhutanese families are leaving this year as part of the Diversity Visa recipients of the USA.
One such family had a civil servant husband and a wife with a job in the private sector, their own house and they had no real economic motives to move out with their two young children.
The mother shared that the main reason for the move is that her differently abled son would get better care and benefits in the USA.
While we are paying the cost of ignoring the economy and private sector in the form of the mass migration, we will also have to pay the price of ignoring the plight of the disabled for too long.
It is true that in the last few years a lot has moved on the disability front in education, healthcare and awareness, but it is also true that a lot of time has been lost.
The National Policy for Persons with Disabilities was framed in 2019, but it gathered dust on the shelves and was not implemented or simply ignored.
The need of the hour is a Disability Act to enshrine the policies into rights and actions, but this has not even been thought about.
In all honesty there is still a lot of stigma and misperceptions around disability in Bhutan.
Bhutan joined the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2023, but it did so after much delay, doubts and some conditions and after being among the last 10 countries in the world to not adopt it till then.
It is a crying shame that only 1,253 children with disabilities are enrolled in 44 inclusive schools but 5,103 children with disabilities remain out of school due to infrastructure challenges and insufficient specialized educators.
The National Health Survey in the most detailed survey of its kind till date found that there are 48,325 persons with disabilities in Bhutan out of 710,667 people. This is 6.8 percent of the total population.
The ESP was supposed to include the disabled but that has now gone silent.
The disabled in Bhutan do not need sympathy which is a form of superiority, but empathy, which is an understanding of their situation and doing something to help.
We have lost valuable time and it is not only time to play catch up but also put in the right inclusive mindset, resources and bring about implementation on the ground, otherwise the concept of a Bhutanese national family will start to ring hollow.
“There is no greater disability in society than the inability to see a person as more.” – Robert M. Hensel