CHAPTER THREE: DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL GOVERNANCE __________________________________________________________________________ considered a curse, a punishment for the victim or his/her parents for violating a taboo, or quite simply the penalty for a bad character or poor behaviour. Disability is perceived as an evil spell. A newborn with abnormalities is a sign of the gods’ displeasure with a community guilty of deviant behaviour. The newborn must duly be sent back to the gods to appease them. This encourages the murder of malformed children. In some tribes, these children are simply removed by drowning. However, disability that occurs later in life is better tolerated23. 327. However, efforts by the Department of Social Protection of the Ministry of Family and Social Welfare to sensitise people and to present a less demeaning image of disability are helping to change people’s attitudes. 328. However, in some parts of the country, disabled newborn babies are still murdered at birth. The handicapped must therefore keep a low profile within the family and avoid any contact with strangers. Society’s unwillingness to accept the disabled is sometimes so acute that these people are compelled to leave their families and try to make ends meet, usually by begging on the streets. They are also marginalised by the family, in the educational environment and in the workplace. 329. In its attempts to alleviate this situation, the government has promoted this category of the population by increasing public awareness about it. Benin has introduced a few questions about the disabled in its 2002 general census survey. The results showed that 172,870 persons (2.55%) of Benin’s population were disabled. This figure is believed to be low compared to observations made elsewhere in the developing world, which show the figure to be about 4%. Presumably, the census missed some disabled persons because they do not want to be counted. A more accurate estimate of their number may be close to 271,000. Moreover, disabled persons in Benin are unequally divided between the north and the south. The prevalence of disability is, on average, two times higher in the south (3.04%) than in the four northern regions (1.6%). It is likely that the more difficult socioeconomic conditions of the northern regions do not favour the survival of disabled persons24. 330. Senior citizens. The CRM noted that, according to the various census surveys in Benin, the number of senior citizens is increasing tremendously. The numbers have gone up from 302,283 in 1979 to 477,697 in 2002. This is a 50% increase. The vast majority of senior citizens are illiterate and live in very poor conditions. 331. The social conditions of older women seem more unfavourable. On average, they live longer than the men, and the practice of polygamy means that women are more likely to be widowed. Two out of every five elderly women are widows, while only one elderly man in every 20 is a widower. However, it is a belief in Benin that the transmission of witchcraft is matrilineal. This is why 23 Justine Adkjounle, Odjoube and Memounath Zounon born in Bissiriou, Tome. The disabled in Benin, Volume 5, Characteristics of vulnerable people in Benin. INSAE. 24 October 2005. Policy and development strategy for physiotherapy in 2006-2010 in Benin, a working paper presented during the national workshop on validation. 126