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HomeLatest newsINCE Benin: Language at the heart of inclusion
July 8, 2025

INCE Benin: Language at the heart of inclusion

In line with its dream of promoting quality inclusive education in Benin, the Benin consortium continues to pursue several key initiatives. Recently, it revitalized and trained the Monitoring Committees on Inclusive Education for 2025 and organized a strategic reflection workshop on communication in this area. It also organized a workshop on best practices and the adoption of language adapted to disability issues, which is the focus of this article.

Language at the heart of inclusion in Benin

Indeed, on June 26 and 27, 2025, the Local Partnership for Education, in collaboration with education unions, the Federation of Associations of Disabled People of Benin (FAPHB) and experts from the African Union, worked to promote respect and inclusion through language.

Bringing change through language

Bringing about change through language is the mission that all these actors set for themselves during this two-day workshop in Comè, Benin. The actors recognized that ignorance, not malice, is often at the root of reductive terminology in our remarks towards people with disabilities. Our work on inclusion is focused on values such as love and solidarity. The expression of all these values is through language. This is what motivated these actors to reflect on harmonizing the terminology they use in the context of inclusion in order to ban stigmatizing expressions such as “blind” or “lame”, in favor of more appropriate terms such as “visually impaired” or “disabled person”.

Extending the circle of change

This workshop marks the beginning of a series of actions. Restitutions and thematic conferences are planned at the departmental and community levels to extend this circle of change. The ambition is to go even further, by developing and disseminating a collection of vocabulary on disability, and an advocacy campaign is being prepared to this end.

Crucially important

Participants expressed their satisfaction with this “crucially important” initiative. The President of the FAPHB also emphasized that this activity allowed his federation to “Offload a very heavy burden that has long been a concern and dear to the hearts of many stakeholders and defenders of the rights of people with disabilities.”

Limitless love

Closing the workshop, Mr. Ephraïm Ishola T. AGOMAN, National Coordinator of PLE-Benin, warmly thanked the participants for their sacrifice and work. This workshop opens “new perspectives” in the promotion of inclusion, proving that “even if the road seems long, the love in our hearts should be limitless.”