A group of civil society organisations (CSOs) has called on the government of Malawi to ensure the protection of the rights of people with albinism (PWA) in the country.
The human rights organisations made the call as the spate of attacks on PWA in the country continues.
Several reports, including a study by Amnesty International, show that PWA in Malawi suffer serious violations of their human rights and risk losing their lives in attacks.
Available data also shows that since 2014, over 170 PWA have been attacked in the country due to false beliefs that concoctions mixed with their body parts bring luck and wealth.
In some cases, according to local media reports, grave robbers have exhumed corpses to retrieve the bodies of PWA.
Leaders of the CSOs, including the Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR), Malawi Human Rights Resource Centre (MHRRC), Association for Persons with Albinism in Malawi (APAM), and the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace of the Episcopal Conference of Malawi (CCJP), urged the Malawi Police Service to assure PWA of their security in 2022.
The human rights defenders made the call at a press conference in Lilongwe, the country’s capital.
The APAM President, Young Muhamba, said that Malawi had the worst record of attacks on PWA in Africa.
‘Any kind of attack brings fear to us and we have a feeling that certain quarters within the Malawi society would like to wipe out the population of persons with albinism’, Muhamba read from a joint statement.
‘Why should persons with albinism be hunted like animals? We are dismayed with the Malawi government’s laissez-faire attitude in addressing these human rights concerns, challenges and outstanding problems encountered by persons with albinism under the context of these attacks’.
In 2018 the government of Malawi and the United Nations (UN) developed the National Action Plan on Persons with Albinism.
The plan, Development Diaries understands, is designed to discourage attacks and provide PWA with greater protection, in part, by giving out security alarms.
The UN National Coordinator in Malawi had said in August 2021 that full implementation of the plan could help end the attacks.
On health challenges, the CCJP National Coordinator, Boniface Chibwana, lamented that there were no medications such as sunscreen lotion in almost all the public health facilities to protect the PWA from cancer attack.
‘Since 2020, more than 25 innocent souls of PWA have been lost to skin cancer while more than 50 PWA are currently battling with skin cancer in their respective homes’, Chibwana lamented.
‘It should be clearly stated that about 99 percent of deaths of persons with albinism in Malawi are due to skin cancer. The government of Malawi has provided only limited support for the medical needs of PWA.
‘Sunscreen lotion is not available and accessible in many government health facilities such as health centres and health posts in much of the country’s rural area where 87 percent of persons with albinism live.
‘Eye treatment is also neglected as mobile clinics for eyesight assessment and actual treatment are not available to most rural, remote and hard-to-reach areas’.
Photo source: AP
