When a relative developed a psychotic disorder, Edmond Gichuru, a lawyer from Kenya, became interested in the rights of people with mental disabilities in Kenya. Now, he’s a Syracuse University law student studying disability rights law.

Gichuru, who used to work in the field of constitutional law, land law and international law, is studying in the United States as part of the Disability Rights Scholarship program offered by the Open Society Foundations. Through the program, foreign-trained students study disability rights law at one of five law schools around the world. According to the Open Society website, only students from 10 countries in Africa and South America, as well as China and Mexico, are eligible to apply for the program.

“The thing(s) I like about this place (are) the professors and the resources because the resources are readily available: the materials, the information, whether in print or software,” Gichuru said. “It’s (easier) to research about anything absolutely here than back at home.”

Gichuru said people with mental disabilities also face barriers in Kenya because many people in the country believe they are bewitched. For one of his classes at SU, he is writing a paper in which he argues for the development of legal capacity for people with mental disabilities in Kenya.

Arlene Kanter, a professor in SU’s College of Law, said the program has been going on for three years and has had a total of six students. So far, one student’s paper has already been published and one other is in the process of being published.

Kanter helped draft the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. She reached out to Open Society and said there needed to be a program to train students from other countries in disability rights law. Now she’s the founder and director of the program at SU.

“In my view, if we want to have a just society, an inclusive society … we have to realize that for centuries, people with disabilities have been invisible and excluded so we need now a concerted effort of advocacy to recognize the rights and to realize the rights of people with disabilities,” Kanter said.

One of the criteria to apply for the program is that the students return to their countries after graduation to help improve the plight of people with disabilities there.

Pamela Smith Castro, a student from Peru who is also attending SU through the Disability Rights Scholarship program, said people with disabilities in Peru have problems with accessibility to buildings and transportation, as well as getting jobs. She added that people with mental disabilities aren’t given legal capacity.

“When we are talking about people with disabilities, we are talking about a huge minority in society and people that suffer discrimination, that are struggling with barriers; they just need accommodations accessibility because the disability (is) not about the impairment of the person, it’s about the barriers in society,” Castro said.

Kanter said she’s heard positive feedback from students involved in the program, but that it’s also been a good experience for SU students, some of whom act as mentors for the international students.

“The program has made a huge impact within Syracuse University law school,” Kanter said. “It’s allowed our students to get to know students from other countries and learn from them about their cultures, about their way of doing things and to me, that’s what education’s all about, so it’s clearly been a two-way benefit.”

Published on October 13, 2015 at 9:19 pm

Contact: clmoran@syr.edu