Equatorial Guinea does not respect the right to education for deaf children

Equatorial Guinea does not respect the right to education for deaf children
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It’s raining in Bata, a port city in Equatorial Guinea. The heavy rain makes a thunderous noise as it strikes the tin roof of the La Fe school. Inside, however, no one appears to notice or care. The teacher continues to explain equations while the students fix their gaze on the movement of his hands and the shapes formed by his fingers, so as not to lose the thread. Only when the water begins to seep into the classroom and the first drops fall on the students’ maths notebooks do they notice the deluge. Pilar Bilogo, headteacher of this school for the deaf, picks up the phone and makes a call. It’s yet another challenge facing this school for the deaf.

 

Pilar Bilogo in her home with some of the young people she takes in. A total of six deaf children and one mute child with a mental disorder live with her. Pilar feeds, clothes and educates them without any outside support. “There is a reason why I continue to accept students in class and children at home: the family abandonment and isolation suffered by deaf children in my country,” she says.

Photo: Diego Menjíbar Reynés

Equatorial Guinea, a small country on the west coast of Africa, has 1.5 million inhabitants and only three schools for the deaf. Bata, its commercial capital, is home to two: La Fe and Manos Felices (with 80 and 50 students, respectively). The third school, run by the Red Cross, is located in the capital city of Malabo.

Bilogo, who understands the urgency of educating deaf children as early as possible, founded the La Fe school in 2013 to provide affordable schooling to students with special education needs. Most significantly, La Fe became the first school in the country to accept deaf pupils over the age of seven with no previous training in sign language.

 

Lucia and another student communicate between classrooms in sign language. The country has no official data on the number of children who are deaf (and, as a consequence, out of school).

Photo: Diego Menjíbar Reynés

According to the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD): “The key is to make sure that deaf children are exposed to sign language as early as possible”. As Stefania Fadda, president of the European Society for Mental Health and Deafness, explains: “Exposing deaf children to an effective and early form of communication, either spoken or sign language or both [bilingualism], greatly reduces stress and discomfort [which can in turn be a source of] suffering, identity disturbance and psychiatric disorders”.

 

Emanuel, 9, at Pilar Bilogo’s home, where he lives. Emanuel is mute, an orphan and suffers from a mental disorder that goes untreated due to lack of financial resources. Emanuel has no educational resources in his city.

Photo: Diego Menjíbar Reynés

As is the case in many African nations, being deaf in Equatorial Guinea means facing isolation and abandonment by family members. Particularly in the country’s interior regions, it is still widely believed that the mothers of deaf children had a spell placed on them during pregnancy and that their newborn children are cursed as a result. Young people grow up with this stigma and bear the burden of it throughout their lives, as do their mothers.

 

Lucia, a deaf student at La Fe, waits for the teacher to arrive. Lucia receives no treatment for her hearing loss as the health system in Equatorial Guinea does not include free health coverage for this type of disability.

Photo: Diego Menjíbar Reynés

Hearing loss is more prevalent in poor countries. “In the most disadvantaged and poor areas of Africa, children with deafness run the risk of not developing an adequate language and not having access to education, and therefore becoming socially excluded, lonely and isolated adults,” says Fadda. According to the WHO, nearly 80 per cent of people with disabling hearing loss live in low- and middle-income countries.

Access to care also plays a role: 78 per cent of low-income countries have fewer than one ear, nose and throat specialist for every one million people; 93 per cent have fewer than one audiologist for every million people, and only 50 per cent have at least one teacher of the deaf.

 

Students during a class at La Fe school. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities obliges signatory countries to ensure that teachers are proficient in sign language. Equatorial Guinea has not signed the Convention.

Photo: Diego Menjíbar Reynés

In order to provide guidance to countries in integrating ear and hearing care into their national health plans, the WHO created the World Report on Hearing in 2021. The report states that “lack of accurate information and stigmatising mindsets surrounding ear diseases and hearing loss often limit people’s access to care for these conditions”.

In 2021, 1.5 billion people worldwide were living with some degree of hearing loss and 430 million were in need of rehabilitation services. Even more alarming, the WHO predicts that by 2050, one in four people will be living with some degree of hearing loss and 700 million will need care and rehabilitation services.

 

A student with special educational needs writes in his notebook. While Article 57 of Equatorial Guinea’s General Education Law requires the National Education System to have qualified teachers, as well as teaching aids and materials, to ensure that students with disabilities can participate in the learning process, the country does not have enough qualified teachers to meet the needs of these students.

Photo: Diego Menjíbar Reynés

Deaf people suffer from isolation and struggle to adapt in environments where the majority of people are hearing. According to the mental health and hearing impairment unit of the Basque Country in Spain: “Isolation itself has been identified as the cause of mental illness in these patients”. Isolation starts in the family, as 90 to 95 per cent of deaf children are born to hearing parents.

 

Gael, a 23-year-old student with special educational needs, attends class. Gael was diagnosed with complete aphasia after falling into a coma for four days when he was five months old. His diagnosis is inconclusive and the doctors who examined him recommended tests at a better equipped medical centre abroad.

Photo: Diego Menjíbar Reynés

Rubella, meningitis, measles and mumps can cause hearing loss. According to the WHO, most of these diseases can be prevented by vaccination.

 

Benedicta, a teacher at La Fe school, in front of her class.

Photo: Diego Menjíbar Reynés

“While there is a legal framework on special education needs, there is no evidence of institutional mechanisms and operations aimed at its implementation,” Santiago Bivini Mangué, secretary general of the Equatorial Guinea National Commission for UNESCO, explains in a documentary entitled Necesidades Educativas Especiales en Guinea Ecuatorial. The legal framework to which he refers is the current General Education Law, several articles of which stipulate the need for educational opportunities for people with disabilities. Currently, all educational centres for the deaf in the country are either private initiatives or run by a charity.

 

Remigio Agustín, an electrical engineering student at the National University of Equatorial Guinea (UNGE), on the first day of the 2021/22 academic year at the La Fe school: “I’ve been a volunteer teacher for three years now and I want to continue my training and my work with this project,” he says.

Photo: Diego Menjíbar Reynés

According to the NGO Deaf Child Worldwide, there are 8.9 million deaf children in sub-Saharan Africa. Equatorial Guinea still has no pedagogical guide for developing a special education curriculum and most Equatoguinean institutions rely on regular education guides. According to a 2015 UNICEF report on the state of special education in Equatorial Guinea, only 2 per cent of teachers for students with special educational needs have a technical level in special education. The organisation also found that 90 per cent of teachers experience difficulties in dealing with students with these needs.

“Deaf children face barriers in education if teachers and peers are not fluent in sign language that can result in illiteracy,” warns the WFD.

 

La Fe’s school bus is out of action due to a lack of funds. When in service, it is used to drive students to and from school.

Photo: Diego Menjíbar Reynés

Pilar’s work has finally paid off. Following a meeting last October with the country’s Minister of Social Affairs and Gender Equality, Consuelo Nguema, the latter pledged to build a new centre for the La Fe school, due to be built in two years’ time. In the meantime, the school has paid two months’ rent for a temporary centre. For now, the new centre remains only a promise. If unfulfilled, it would leave more than 100 deaf children in Bata without schooling.

This article has been translated from Spanish by Brandon Johnson