Both government and non-governmental organizations have been working together protecting the rights of people with disabilities.
Though these organizations put much effort in protecting rights of people with disabilities, in many communities’ things are different.
A recent research by MIJ Online has established that many women who have children with disabilities are facing discrimination across the country.
On a sad note, men are the ones who are perpetuating violence to children with disabilities as they deny responsibility to take care of their children.
According to MIJ Online investigation has found that mothers of children with disability are forced to conceive so that they can give birth to children without disability.
Some of mothers of children with disability complained that their husbands threaten to divorce them if they have not given birth to a child without disability.
Mrs Jenipher Banda , a mother of four children with disability, said she has been forced by her husband not to take family planning methods as he believes that his wife will one day bare a child without disability.
According to Banda, she couldn’t deny what her husband demanded as she was warned to divorce her if she will disobey.
However this has just made her to have four disabled children which is also imposing threat on her healthy.
Things took a different turn in 2021, when she gave birth to another child who was born with a disability.
The man had further told his wife to do everything possible to bare a children without a disability to secure her marriage.
Later, the man stopped supporting his family and he was spending a lot of his time outside.
Banda denied to bare another children which did not go down well with her husband who ended the marriage and went away with all the property including kitchen utensils.
The man went for good and it is now 2 years since he left for unknown place.
It never rained but poured as things got worse when she went back to her home village where she was not welcomed. She was evicted from the house by her own parents.
The atrocities she faced at her village had forced her to seek for a shelter in a certain grass thatched house which on a certain day fell on her and the children due to heavy rains that made her and a children with disabilitities to escape with injuries.
Apart from lack of shelter, Banda is also lacking food, clothes and wheelchairs for her children who cannot sit nor do any activities of daily living.
She, however, asks government to review the laws that protect women with disabilities so that stiff punishment is given to men who run away from their responsibility to take care of their children with disabilities and who are forcing their wives not to take family planning methods.
In her remarks, Jenipher Ngwira Lecturer at the Catholic University of Malawi (CU) for special needs education said government should review laws that protect the rights of women with children that have disabilities.
Ngwira said she is disappointed as many fathers of children with disabilities are on the fore front promoting the malpractice.
And conquering with Ngwira is Memory Ngosi Chisenga one of the child Rights Campaigner who asked government to intervene on the matter in order to protect the lives of children with disability.
On the other hand, the Federation of Disability Organizations in Malawi (FEDOMA) through its executive director Symon Munde said women with disabilities have also right to take family planning methods on top of other rights just like any other woman.
Munde said his organization has been receiving such reports- saying many women who have children with disabilities are facing all sorts of violence.
Therefore Munde has asked foe government’s intervention.
Another organization of Parents of Disabled Children Association of Malawi (PODCAM) which defends freedom for parents whose children are born with disability said it has received a lot of complaints about men ill-treating and torturing their wives on the basis that they gave birth to a child with disability.
Speaking to M IJ Online Lynes Manduwa Executive director for PODCAM said many mothers were divorced that make them to face untold hardships with their children.
Manduwa said her organization has 16 thousand members out of them 12 000 women were divorced by their husbands because they have a child with disability and they were divorced for denying not to take family planning methods.
Meanwhile Manduwa has asked quick intervention by government to rescue mothers whose children are born with disability and are divorced by their husbands for taking family planning methods.
Minister of Gender, Hon. Jean Sendeza, expressed her disappointment and sadness, and has pledged government’s support as the matter is being investigated.