The persons with disabilities meet with barriers when they want to use their basic rights and fundamental freedoms, especially to access justice. The low accessibility to infrastructure, information and community social services is also a problem. Such conclusions were formulated by the Office of the People’s Ombudsman and were presented in an international conference held to mark five years of the ratification by Moldova of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, IPN reports.

Senior adviser to the parliamentary ombudsman Svetlana Rusu said they speak about progress made in guaranteeing the rights of the persons with disabilities, but this category of people do not feel significant changes. “It is not enough to adopt laws. It is important to work out implementation mechanisms because we have good laws, but they are mostly not respected,” she stated.

The adviser said the reduced access to social infrastructure leads to many other difficulties. For example, a person with disabilities finds it difficult to reach an education institution, starting from transport and up to the access to buildings, most of which do not have ramps for wheelchair users.

The social benefits below the minimum subsistence level and the reduced employment level are also among the problems. A large part of the persons with disabilities do not know their rights and are passive when they need to defend them.

According to the most recent statistical data, there are about 184,000 persons with disabilities in Moldova, over 134,000 of whom are children.