by Timi Odueso
In recent years, mental health and wellness-centred conversations have become widespread across Nigeria. From employees speaking about toxic work cultures, to victims of abuse and trauma speaking up about their experiences, Nigeria has witnessed a rise in the appreciation of mental health advocacy.
While a lot of this is owed to social media platforms, which encourages sharing lived experiences, one cannot deny the influences mental health organisations and their founders have had in helping persons living with mental health conditions to speak up.
In 2016, Hauwa Ojeifo—who had been recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the time—founded a platform, called She Writes Woman, to help share her mental health struggles and experience. Little did Hauwa know that her openness would help propel her vision for mental wellness in Nigeria into international light.
Since its foundation in 2016, Hauwa has used She Writes Woman to give mental health a voice in Nigeria by empowering persons living with mental health conditions to tell their own stories, co-create their own solutions, and advocate for their own rights. Till date, Hauwa’s work at She Writes Woman has led her to help over 15,000 Nigerians living with mental health conditions, garnering recognition from international platforms like the Queen’s Young Leaders’ Foundation, MTV EMA and the Obama Foundation.
In February 2019, as part of She Writes Woman’s policy and legislative advocacy programme, Hauwa became the first person living with a mental health condition to appear before the House of Assembly where she charged the Public Health Committee to adopt rights-based approach for mental health legislation in Nigeria.
Now, she has taken the message to the 14th United Nations Conference of State Parties on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities where she gave the opening statement on the 15th of June.
The United Nations Conference of State Parties on the Rights of Persons Living with Disabilities is an annual conference set to help signatories to the Convention on the Rights of Persons Living with Disabilities (UN CRPD) implement changes to mental health legislations in their countries.
Enacted in 2008, the UN CRPD is, ‘an international treaty which identifies the rights of persons with disabilities as well as the obligations of states to promote, protect and ensure those rights.’ Since its enactment in 2008, 163 countries—including Nigeria—have ratified the UN CRPD, but very few are yet to actually implement it.
In Nigeria, the CRPD was ratified in 2008 but no concrete steps by the government have been taken to overhaul the archaic Lunacy Act of 1958, which severely limits the rights of persons living with mental health conditions, and replace it—or at least parts of it—with the UN CRPD. While efforts have been made in 2013 and 2018 to introduce a mental health bill, experts like Hauwa highlight that this new bill is just a fancy dressed-up version of the Lunacy Act.
In February of 2020, Hauwa appeared at the public hearing for the mental health bill where her speech on the importance of ‘Nothing About Us Without Us’—a mantra advocating for the inclusion of persons in creating laws that affect them—helped stall the inclusion of discriminatory language into the proposed Mental Health Bill.
Nigeria is not the only country to have hitches in implementing the CRPD, though. Thirteen years after its ratification, numerous countries still struggle with implementing the treaty. A report by UCLA highlights that ‘only 27 per cent of the countries in the world explicitly guarantee equality of non-discrimination on the basis of disability.’ This is why the Conference of States Panel, at which Hauwa gave the opening statement to the 14th edition, is important.
The COSP for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is implemented by the General Assembly of the United Nations as an enforcement of Article 40 of the CRPD which stipulates that, “The State Parties shall meet regularly in a Conference of State Parties (COSP) in order to consider any matter with regard to the implementation of the present Convention.”
In essence, it is where signatory countries discuss the difficulties they are facing in implementing the articles of the UN CRPD and learn from other countries.
Several important figures have given opening statements at the COSP, including the Secretary-General of the UN, Antonio Guterres; and Chair of the International Disability Alliance (IDA), Ms Ana Lucia Arellano.
Hauwa Ojeifo is not the first Nigerian to give an opening statement at the COSP, although she is the first Nigerian woman to do so. In 2019, Danlami Umaru Basharu, who serves as an expert on the Committee for the COSP and the former president of the Joint National Association for Persons with Disabilities (JONAPWD) gave an opening statement. While his statement during the 13th Conference in 2020 adopts a facts-based approach in charging the COSP, Hauwa’s is empathy-based as she shared a story in a bid to reach the Conference.
Hauwa’s statement first highlighted the horror persons living with disabilities face in many countries, even in the 21st Century. Through She Writes Woman’s work with the Human Rights Watch #BreakTheChains campaign, it was revealed that numerous countries, including those who have ratified the CRPD, still employ shackling and chaining in restricting persons with disabilities. Using the story of Remi, Hauwa also highlighted the realities of persons living with mental health conditions in Nigeria who are detained and forced into dubious treatment centres where they are mishandled and mistreated.
In closing, she charged the state parties with the responsibility of implementation and inclusive participation for persons living with disabilities. “Today,” Hauwa said, “you distinguished delegates must take responsibility for all the harm done to us and renew your commitment to working with us, people with disabilities, to realise our rights. We are at a pivotal moment, leveraging what we experienced during the pandemic, to collectively build a more equal and just world.”
In practice of what she preaches, Hauwa—through her organisation—has helped train sixty persons living with mental health conditions on strategic advocacy in 2021. Through its first-of-its-kind 24/7 toll-free helpline, (0800 800 2000), She Writes Woman has also attended to more than 1900 mental health calls in 2021 alone, slowly becoming the first point of contact for mental health support in Nigeria.
The organisation has also provided 131 hours of free therapy to Nigerians, while its digital mental health community, Safe Place Nigeria, continues to provide digital mental healthcare, wellness resources, self-care tools and access to mental health professionals at a token fee.
Timi Odueso, the content and communications officer of She Writes Woman, writes from Abuja
