From November 25 to December 25 the RA Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in collaboration with a number of NGOs is holding one-month action titled “Equal Opportunities to the Disabled.” Its main goal is to explain to the society through advocacy that the disabled people have equal rights with everybody else and they must be considered regular citizens. The substantiation of the action is that our society is not yet ready to consider the disabled as real citizens and they are quite often discriminated. For this purpose the ministry and the various NGOs are spending enormous amount of money; they prepare various videos, organize even more various seminars, etc. Meanwhile, the society in fact quite well understands the things on which the mentioned organizations are spending money on in order to advocate. The best example for that is the 10-year old boy Armen, who lives in Sari Tagh. He was born disabled. He, being so young and disabled, during the interview with us expressed more meaningful thoughts than many of the state officials, who make decisions on behalf of such people. “My teachers help me a lot. And I love them a lot. When I am alone and need somebody’s help they accompany me like my relatives. It’s not that I am not like them because all the other kids like me,” says Armen, whose parents due to the lack of financial means, are not able to provide necessary medical procedures for Armen. And the ministry including the rest of the organizations continues the advocacy and propaganda. It is not addressed to any concrete people. It is advertised on TV and most importantly it is profitable.
