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CNN International's "Inside Africa" featured Women's Commission report on refugees with disabilities

posted: June 22, 2008

CNN International's "Inside Africa" featured highlights from the Women's Commission's new Refugees with Disabilities report and an interview with Abdi Salah, a Somalian refugee who lived with a disability in Kenyan camps.

Excerpted from CNN.com:

Displaced, Disabled and Neglected

About 3.5 million displaced people live with disabilities, according to the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children. The group has just released a report evaluating the services available to disabled refugees. Among the key findings -- refugees with disabilities are among the most hidden, neglected and socially excluded of all displaced people; they don't have access to mainstream assistance programs due to physical or social barriers; and they usually become even more isolated than they were before being displaced.

Abdi Salah knows firsthand the challenges of being disabled and displaced. He contracted polio at the age of one, and the disease left his right leg partially paralyzed. When civil war broke out in his native Somalia, he and his family were forced to flee. He was separated from his parents and hasn't seen them since. Salah spent the next 14 years in two camps in Kenya, where medical care was sorely lacking. He now lives in Atlanta, and was kind enough to stop by our studios to share his experience.