(a) Children with disabilities 52. Children with any form of disability, physical, mental, intellectual or sensory must be registered in order to achieve universal birth registration. The African Commission has emphasised the need to protect the dignity of persons with mental disabilities, and deplored some national legislation that brands these persons as “lunatics”, or “idiots”. These are terms which, without any doubt, dehumanise and deny them any form of dignity in contravention of Article 5 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples‟ Rights.24 The African Commission maintained that mentally disabled persons would like to share the same hopes, dreams and goals and have the same rights to pursue those hopes, dreams and goals just like any other human being.25 53. The Committee reiterates that persons with disabilities cannot aspire to the above hopes, dreams and goals unless their births have been duly registered. The Committee notes that discriminative and dehumanising laws against persons with disabilities create fears in parents about registering a child born with a disability. Fulfilling the States parties‟ obligation not to discriminate against children born with disabilities means that State parties must take special measures aimed at the protection of their rights straight from the start, i.e. from their birth, by ensuring that they are duly registered. 54. The Committee notes that registration of children born with disabilities increases their chances of being taken into consideration for specific policies and programmes designed to ensure that they are treated with dignity and harmoniously integrated into their society. Such policies and programmes include packages for education adapted to their condition (such as Braille for the blind, signing language for the deaf, appropriate and adequately trained teachers capable of using childcentred and individualised teaching strategies, appropriate and acceptable teaching materials, equipment and devices), health care, social developments grants, social security benefits, parental support programmes and so forth. 24 25 Purohit and Moore v The Gambia, para 59. Purohit and Moore v The Gambia, para 61. 20