BENGALURU: Equality is mere tokenism, feels Yetnebersh Nigussie, a lawyer and disability rights activist from Ethiopia, who was in the city for the recently-concluded India Inclusion Summit 2018. After all, she has faced a fair share of trials and tribulations after having lost her eye-sight at the age of five. “If you say everyone is equal, but you’re not treating others equally, then that’s the worst form of inequality,” says the lawyer, who has taken it upon herself to work at “taking equality beyond just a formality.”
A blessing in disguise, Nigussie says that had she not turned blind, she probably wouldn’t have been educated, and instead, been married off just like the other girls in her community. “When I turned blind after a bout of sickness, I couldn’t fit in to my community anymore, and had to move out. That’s when an Indian Catholic nun, Jessintha Matthew, took me under her wing, and with the support of other nuns, helped me get educated,” she says.
In addition to her day job, Nigussie also runs Light for the World, an NGO that works for disability and development. “We are working for inclusive education — one class for all. That is the best way to teach children without disability about the diversity and make the world to care for the cause,” she says, pointing out that we are slowly but surely becoming an inclusive society.
“The disability movement has reached a stage where people have accepted inclusivity in principle and are working towards it. The best way to go forward is to have equal participation from every section of society,” says the 2017 joint winner of the Right Livelihood Award, the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ for her work. She shares the honour with Khadija Ismayilova, an Azerbaijani investigative journalist and radio host; Colin Gonsalves, senior advocate of the Supreme Court of India and the founder of Human Rights Law Network (HRLN); and American environmental lawyer Robert Bilott.
With a “billion friends”, Nigussie calls herself a billionnaire. “There are a billion people with disability, I have a billion friends, which is priceless,” she says.