The Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, in collaboration with the Department of Public Law is launching a Master’s degree programme (LLM/MPhil) in Disability Rights in Africa. The programme is unique in that it is the first Master’s programme in disability rights in Africa. The Master’s programme focuses on the implementation of disability rights in Africa in line with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the newly adopted Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Africa (African Protocol).  The mission of the programme is “[E]ducating passionate defenders of the rights of persons with disabilities with a deep understanding of the rights of persons with disabilities and providing tools to work towards reasonable accommodation and against discrimination and stigma of persons with disabilities.”

Offered over a period of two years, the programme utilises a hybrid teaching approach comprising online interaction and residential contact weeks in Pretoria. The Centre for Human Rights collaborated with the Department of Education Innovation and the Department of Public Law at the University of Pretoria in designing an accessible and inclusive curriculum for the programme which can be utilized by learners with various types of disabilities including visual impairments.

The first set of students for the 2019 academic year have already been selected and are in Pretoria for their first contact session from the 10^th to the 14^th of December 2018. This first contact session will serve as an intensive and detailed orientation week to introduce the students to various aspects of the programme, in particular the online tools which they will use throughout the duration of the programme.

In time, this programme will have an impact on the enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by persons with disabilities in Africa by producing African graduates equipped with the requisite knowledge and skills needed to implement and enforce the rights of persons with disabilities in Africa in accordance with the CRPD and the African Protocol through advocacy, litigation, scholarship, legislation and policy.

For more information, please contact:

Jehoshaphat John Njau

Project Coordinator: Disability Rights Unit

Tel: +27 12 420 5408
Fax: +27 (0) 86 580 5743
jehoshaphat.njau@up.ac.za

Innocentia Mgijima-Konopi

Manager: Disability Rights and Law Schools Programme

Tel: +27 (0) 12 420 6398
Fax: +27 (0) 86 580 5743
innocentia.mgijima@up.ac.za