News
‘It was not an easy journey, but I made it’
Play audio version
Attorney Jean Claude Ngabonziza and His Work in Disability Rights in Rwanda
September 22, 2021
*** Content warning regarding genocide
KIGALI, Rwanda — Jean Claude Ngabonziza was only four years old when the 1994 Rwandan genocide began. Ngabonziza describes what he thinks he knew was happening at the start of the genocide. “… I could see that everyone was so worried,” he says. “My mother kept us in the house and was always praying and crying. They could not let us out to play, and my dad was no longer going to the fields. I was young, but I believe I was scared, too.”
After a period of hiding and trying to survive, Ngabonziza and his family were bombarded with grenades that left him with blindness. His mother, the only other surviving family member, enrolled him in HVP (Home of Virgin of the Poor), a school for children with disabilities in Gatagara, and later the Gahini Secondary School after the genocide.
Today, Jean Claude Ngabonziza is a lawyer working with UWEZO Youth Empowerment, an organization supporting youth with disabilities. UWEZO Youth Empowerment is under the umbrella cohort of the National Union of Disability Organizations of Rwanda. Since graduating from the School of Law at the University of Rwanda-Huye Campus with academic distinction, he has worked with many organizations, especially those supporting youth with disabilities. “It was not an easy journey but I made it,” Ngabonziza says. Since 2012, he has been a member of the Rwandan Union of the Blind, where he has been advocating for access to white canes for Rwandans with vision impairments.
Ngabonziza was born in 1990. Both his parents were farmers. He was raised in Kigali, in the Gasabo District and Ndera Sector. He says his family had a lot of expectations for him as their firstborn and only son in his nuclear family. He is grateful to his mother, especially for the role she played in his educational journey. Ngabonziza says, “If it was not for my mother who, instead of keeping me in the backyard, chose to take me to school, which was not an easy task for her with all the difficulties and poverty that was there after the [genocide]. She was having her own problems of trauma and post-war issues of losing her husband and family, but she fought for her son. I cannot thank her enough.”
When asked what makes him thrive, he says, “I do not limit myself. I try everything that I can do, put in more work than others. I make sure that I am satisfied with my work, which is not an easy task to achieve.”
Rose Umutesi is a 2021 DJP Fellow and chairperson of the National Organization of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry in Rwanda (NOUSPR) and co-founder and treasurer of its umbrella organization, the National Union of Disabilities Organizations of Rwanda (NUDOR). @2021 NOUSPR. All rights reserved.
News From the Global Frontlines of Disability Justice
Reducing the Disability Tax
Indonesia has adopted a new regulation aimed at reducing the extra costs disabled people face, guaranteeing discounts across nine sectors, including health care, transportation and assistive devices. But disabled Indonesians say fees and administrative hurdles involved in obtaining the documents needed to access those rights could leave some people behind. As the government begins implementing the policy, advocates are calling for disability assessments to be free and accessible.
Joy As Resistance
In Kenya, queer and disabled people are finding common ground around questions of identity, access, family, and belonging. Ahead of a Nairobi event exploring where disability and queerness intersect, organizers and participants talk about the communities they have found and the spaces they are trying to create. “Queer people and disabled people share way more than they think they do,” says one organizer. The event will use storytelling, art, performance, and what its organizers call “queer joy” to start a conversation they say is long overdue.
The Politics of Waiting, Wanting, and Hoping
In Malaysia, disability exclusion is rarely one dramatic denial. More often, writes Beatrice Leong, it is “a series of ordinary delays” — inaccessible schools, symbolic consultations, policies without enforcement, and a system that asks disabled people to wait patiently for dignity and belonging. Blending personal reflection with political analysis, Leong examines what happens when inclusion is promised repeatedly, but justice never fully arrives.
Read more about The Politics of Waiting, Wanting, and Hoping
Beyond the ADA
The ADA’s influence extends far beyond the United States. It helped shape a growing international approach to disability rights that eventually contributed to the development of the CRPD. But global disability movements have also expanded on ideas that U.S. law has yet to fully embrace. “I think many U.S. disability rights activists were surprised to find out how much we could learn from the international community,” says Eric Rosenthal, founder and executive director of Disability Rights International.
Forgotten People
As Nigeria’s growing insecurity crisis spreads, disabled people face barriers that can make escaping violence far more difficult. Across the country, they describe inaccessible emergency warnings, challenges reaching safety, disrupted livelihoods, and limited access to assistance during times of crisis. Their stories reveal how conflict is experienced differently when mobility, communication, and support cannot be taken for granted and how disability is too often overlooked in emergency planning and response.
The Cost of Surviving
After years of failed treatments for complex PTSD, Marian Siljeholm followed an unlikely lead into the underground world of MDMA-assisted therapy. What began as a search for healing became a journey through the science of trauma, the politics of prohibition, and the hidden global network of people risking their freedom to help others reclaim their lives. Their stories would change her own. As Marian writes, “The next morning, I woke with a thought as real as the bed: This is the first day of my life.”