Nagaland State Disability Forum (NSDF) said it was deeply disheartened by the inaccessibility and insensitivity displayed during an event held at Kohima on October 24.
The forum in a statement said the event held to launch coffee table book Weaving Dreams – A Tribute to Inspiring Women of Nagaland published by the SDG Coordination Centre (SDGCC) should have been an occasion to celebrate inclusivity, but instead turned into a painful reminder of the pervasive exclusion faced by persons with disabilities (PwDs) in Nagaland.
The forum stated that the venue of the event was very shockingly inaccessible to one of the women featured in the book — state disability commissioner Diethono Nakhro. Despite being invited and honoured in the book as an “inspiring woman”, it alleged that she was denied the basic dignity of attending the event due to the venue’s lack of accessibility.
According to the NSDF, the incident put focus on the much larger issue of continued marginalisation of PwDs in the state. As Nakhro herself highlighted in her social media post, the forum pointed out that this was not an isolated case, but a reflection of the everyday reality for disabled people across the state.
Quoting her as saying “Inaccessibility and exclusion are not occasional mishaps but the norm in our society,” and the forum said her words echoed deeply the experiences of so many disabled individuals.
The forum said what was even more troubling was that the event was organised by the SDG team, a group committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, which explicitly include disability inclusion under the principle of “leave no one behind.”
Noting that the failure to provide a basic accessible venue for such a high-profile event called into question the seriousness of these commitments, the NSDF asked how could a society claim to be working towards sustainable development if it continued to overlook the rights and needs of disabled persons.