POSITION PAPER

Delegate : Baiq Silvia Ariani Putri

Country : Egypt
Committee : United Nation Children’s Fund
Topic : Access to Education for Children with Disability

Education has always been an important part of our lives, everyone without exception
deserve to get the same quality education regardless of their backgrounds, and conditions.
Especially in this case, children. According to UNICEF, around 240 million children in the world
have disabilities, with 49% more likely have never attended school. The lack of access to education
for disabled children has been an urgent problem that has been addressed since a long time ago but
is yet to be solved. Access to education for children with disabilities are mainly separated to 2
types, special education and inclusive education. Special education basically separates children
with special needs and providing them with a customized learning process according to their needs.
Meanwhile, UNESCO defines inclusive education as a transformative process that ensures full
participation and access to quality learning opportunities for all children and young people
respecting and valuing diversity and eliminating all forms of discrimination in and through
education. Even with these two methods, both of them still can not be implemented effectively as
there are a few challenges that need to be overcome. The UN also did a Convention on the Rights
of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) with the goals to reaffirm that all persons with all types of
disabilities must enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedom.

Egypt is one of the countries that are currently still trying to improve inclusive education for
children with disabilities. According to the 2017 Population, Housing, and Establishments Census,
10.6% of the population in Egypt, or around 12 million people from age five and above have
disabilities. Now, the question is, from all of those people with disabilities how many of them
actually have access to education in Egypt? The Ministry of Education's data shows that around 7
to 10 percent of students in 2013 had disabilities. The disabilities varied from intellectual
disabilities, or visual and hearing impairments. But this number lowered down in 2016 with only
38.135 students with disabilities that have access to education.

As a response to that, Egypt as a state party of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons
with Disabilities (CRPD) is committed to promote disability-inclusive education which is also in
line with the targets in the SDG's number 4. Egypt signed and ratified the CRC and CRPD in 2007,
thereby making them one of the countries that obligate themselves to eliminate discrimination
against children with disabilities and to make their inclusion into the educational system a priority,
ensuring inclusive education access for all. This includes Egypt's prigram called the Strategic Plan
for Pre-University Education, a plan targetted from 2014-2030 to ensure providing learners with
 POSITION PAPER
Delegate : Baiq Silvia Ariani Putri
Country : Egypt
Committee : United Nation Children’s Fund
Topic : Access to Education for Children with Disability

disabilities with high quality and peer equitable learning opportunities and to include learners in
all pre university schools. Although Egypt made some progress by enrolling arund 7% of students
with disability at general education schools, this number fall short compared to the targetted goals
in Egypt's National Strategic Plans, some studies also indicate that the majority of students with
disabilities that enrolled in general education schools remain only partially included or integrated,
spending the majority of their school day in special education units or special classrooms and
receiving instruction of limited quality.

There are a lot of challenges as to why inclusive education still can not be performed
effectively. To build a fully inclusive systems required changes at all levels of society. This
problem includes the lack of facility and capacity of the education system, also teachers who are
one of the key factors, needs to be trained to teach students with different capabilities and
situations. Stigma and discrimination against disabilities children is also a problem that is still
occurring until now. At the national level, the government must align laws and policies with the
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Taking in consideration the challenges and the capability of most countries, we proposed a
solution with the concept of 'Half inclusive' system. As of now, since the goals of achieving full
inclusive systems seems to be quite out of reach, what we need to prioritize first is to make sure
every children with disabilities is not robbed off their rights to receive education. And for that we
must fix a few things :
1. The availability of inclusive schools
The school that can be used for inclusive education must passed a few criteria, they need to
have suitable and enough facilities to accommodate for children with disabilities.
For example : Providing a wheelchair friendly environtment.
They also needs to have trained teachers that are qualified to teach children with different
needs.The children enrolled to this school will be light to mild disabilities, to ensure that all of
them get the same experiences and result in learning.
2. Continuing implementation of special need schools
As for the students with severe disability, will be enrolled in special education schools. To
make sure they get the proper accommodation they need to get better results from their learning
experiences.
3. Upgrading the system and policy
 POSITION PAPER
Delegate : Baiq Silvia Ariani Putri
Country : Egypt
Committee : United Nation Children’s Fund
Topic : Access to Education for Children with Disability

The government, the Ministry of Education and Technical education and other education
stakeholders need to develop review and Implement education policies and strategies with
allocated budget that respond to the needs of children with disabilities.

4.Addressing the problems

i. Discrimination and stigma
We need to promote disability inclusive education in schools through communication,
campaigns,advocacy and awareness raising activities to enhance understanding of people about
people with disabilities
ii. Provide training for teachers to ensure they will be able to teach students with various
conditions
iii. Providing safe and sufficient facilities at school for student with disabilities.
 POSITION PAPER
Delegate : Baiq Silvia Ariani Putri
Country : Egypt
Committee : United Nation Children’s Fund
Topic : Access to Education for Children with Disability

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DiSES. 2021. "Barriers to Including Childreb with Disabilities in Egyptian Schools".

Retrieved November 22th 2023 from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1291739.pdf

Humanity and Inclusion. 2022. "Disability-Inclusive Education in Egypt". Retrieved

November 22th 2023 from https://www.hi.org/sn_uploads/document/IE_Egypt_Factsheet_April-
2022_Final.pdf

UNICEF. 2022. "Seen, Counted, Included: Using data the shed light on the well-being of
children with disabilities". Retrieved November 22th 2023 from
https://data.unicef.org/resources/children-with-disabilities-report-2021/

UNICEF. "Inclusive Education" Retrieved November 22th 2023 from

https://www.unicef.org/education/inclusive-education

UN. "Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities (CRPD)". Retrieved

November 22th 2023 from https://social.desa.un.org/issues/disability/crpd/convention-on-the-
rights-of-persons-with-disabilities-crpd