The State’s duty is to ensure practical equality for persons with disabilities
AKEL on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities
3 December 2025, AKEL C.C. Press Office, Nicosia
International Day of Persons with Disabilities reminds us all of the state’s duty to ensure that every person with a disability in our country enjoys their rights and opportunities fully and equally.
Today, the daily lives of thousands of our fellow citizens continue to be defined by multiple barriers: inadequate support services, lack of accessibility, meagre benefits, exclusion from work, and inadequate institutional mechanisms. The state must move from issuing announcements to action by fully implementing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Especially at this juncture, AKEL stresses the need to speed up the new legislation on persons with disabilities, which is currently undergoing a legal review by the Legal Service. The new legislation must bring about real change and mark a modern, comprehensive framework that unifies and modernises state policies.
AKEL reaffirms its positions and demands regarding persons with disabilities:
- Complete deinstitutionalisation and development of an integrated comprehensive network of services and the provision of supported living and personalised care.
- Creation by the state and local authorities of adequate infrastructures for social support, socialization and recreation, protection and vocational training for persons with disabilities.
- Universal accessibility to public spaces, schools, hospitals, transportation, and government services.
- Effective implementation of the law on quotas for hiring in the public and broader public sector and the extension of the quota principle to the private sector with incentives for employers.
- Strengthening education and timely intervention for children with disabilities through the development of staffing and specialised services
- Respect for the voice of disability organisations, which must be substantially involved in the elaboration of policies that affect them.
AKEL will continue, both inside and outside Parliament, to fight for policies that serve the dignity and rights of all persons with disabilities, for a society without exclusion, without barriers, without discrimination.
