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United Nations, January 2009

Behind closed doors of psychiatric institutions in many impoverished countries, too many children and adults with mental disabilities live their lives in suffering and isolation.

In Paraguay, autistic young men like Jorge and Julio have suffered at the hands of a system that has failed to understand and protect them.

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To mark the International Day for Disabled Persons, Oscar-winning actress Marlee Matlin joined the International Labour Organization to call for decent work for disabled persons. “Let’s make decent work a reality for all,” she signs.

A charming short film celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, produced by ChildFund Australia and VIAfilm.

For more info, visit www.childfund.org.au

Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation Broadcast: 28/10/2009 Reporter: Kerry O’Brien

Excerpt from Transcript

KERRY O’BRIEN: Therese Rein, disability has been a constant in your life from the very beginning, hasn’t it? Can you briefly recount your father’s story?

THERESE REIN: Yeah, I can do that. Dad grew up actually in Sydney. And he was a rower and a rugby player when he was a boy, always loved planes, joined the RAAF and was in a – was the navigator during the Second World War. He was in a plane that took off and then crashed. And as a result of that, he experienced a severe spinal injury, which progressed into him being a paraplegic.

So he had quite high spinal legion. He was wheelchair user and he was certainly in a wheelchair when I was born.

He decided … he came back from India where he had been in this plane crash and he wanted to go to university. And they – people around him said, “Actually, John, you can’t. You won’t get in because you’ve got a handicap. You’re handicapped, John. Just in case you hadn’t …”

KERRY O’BRIEN: ‘Cause you’re in a wheelchair you can’t study.

Yeah. You won’t be able to physically get to the university. You won’t be able to get up and down the steps in the lecture theatre. You’re not going to be able to do this. I actually think for my dad that was kind of a red rag to a bull, really.

KERRY O’BRIEN: Didn’t people also say, “But you don’t have to worry because you will be on a pension all your life, you’ll have financial support all your life …”?

THERESE REIN: Yeah, they said, John you’re entitled to the total and permanent incapacity pension, you’re a veteran, you’ve done your bit for the nation, mate. So you don’t need to work and you don’t need to do any of those things. The nation owes you.

And I think for dad that wasn’t what he wanted from the nation. What he wanted was to study. And he wanted to do a degree in aeronautical engineering ’cause he had loved planes since the time he was really tiny and had been fascinated by flight.

And so he went to university and he graduated. And he graduated at Sydney Town Hall and got a standing ovation. That’s very special, isn’t it?

KERRY O’BRIEN: And tell me about when he cracked his first job.

THERESE REIN: Yeah, so he then wanted a job and they said the same thing to him, “John, nobody is going to give you a job mate, because you’re handicapped. I think people don’t want sometimes for people to try and fail. I think people don’t necessarily want people to have go in case they’ll be disappointed because living with someone’s disappointment is a very hard thing. So I think they were trying to protect him from disappointment.

And he tried and he applied for job after job after job. And my mum, who was a physio, and

KERRY O’BRIEN: How handy!

THERESE REIN: They met in a hospital – he wasn’t one of her parents. But they met in the hospital and she just encouraged him. She was there, she urged him on. She challenged him. Have another go. Let’s have another go. Let’s try this one.

And eventually somebody gave him a go. Somebody who was an angel in our family history, his name is Keith Thompson, who…

KERRY O’BRIEN: He drove from Melbourne to, I think, Adelaide.

THERESE REIN: He drove from Sydney to Adelaide

KERRY O’BRIEN: For a three three-day tryout.

THERESE REIN: For a three day … three half-day tryout. So he and mum packed up the cars and drove to Adelaide. And he turned up at Weapons Research Establishment in Salisbury in Adelaide, and he there meant to be there for half a day. He was meant to go home at lunch time and he didn’t he stayed all day. Wasn’t meant to come back until the Wednesday, turned up on the Tuesday; stayed all day; turned up on the Wednesday, stayed all day; Thursday the same thing and the Friday the same thing.

And at the end of Friday, Keith Thompson came to him and said, “Well, mate, you’ve got the job.” All the other aeronautical engineers are also sitting down.

KERRY O’BRIEN: So what have you learnt from your father in that regard?

THERESE REIN: A number of things. The first thing I learned I think from him, implicitly, was that to find your field of fascination, to find the thing that you find really intriguing. And to put your energy into that because that creates its own energy.

And the second thing I think is something that I actually heard Sir Phillip Craven say at the recent 20th anniversary of the Paralympics in Bonn, and that is that, what Paralympians do – and my dad was a Paralympian. What Paralympians do is they don’t focus on what doesn’t work, they focus on making what does work, work to the max. And that’s what my dad did. And I think I’ve learnt a little bit about how to do that from him.

KERRY O’BRIEN: When you started your business, was it oriented to finding jobs for the disabled?

THERESE REIN: Mmm.

KERRY O’BRIEN: So again, this was the influence of your father?

THERESE REIN: Absolutely. So what happened for me was I studied psychology. I had this really big week where I handed my thesis in on the Tuesday, did my final exam on the Thursday, packed my apartment on Friday, got married on the Saturday, left the country for five years on the Sunday. Came back to Australia five years later not having worked as a psychologist, with two little kids and looking for what job was I going to.

And I started working with people who had had injuries at work and who couldn’t go back to their pre-injury job because of the nature of their injury. And so they felt like they had hit a brick wall. They just didn’t know what they could do. They were not in work. They were on workers compensation, they hated that. It was a lot less money. They hated being dependent and I thought, Aw, I know these people! I know what this feels like.

Often they had depression following all of that. They were at home. They’d lost their occupational identity. And helping them to find out that, that “ah-ha”! That field of fascination and the, “Yep, this is what I can do, rather than what I can’t do.” As soon as I started doing that, I thought that was “ah-ha” for me. This is what I want to be doing with my life, helping people find out what they can do and helping them then get that job and keep the job and regain their confidence and get back on their feet.

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Source: European Disability Forum

The Council of the European Union, the European Community ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD). This ratification represents a major policy shift toward enforcing human rights obligations and putting disability on top of the human rights agenda: this is the first time in the European Union history that the Community is going to accede to an international human rights treaty.

Nine core international human rights instruments

There are nine core international human rights treaties at the UN level. Entered into force on May 2008, the CRPD is the first United Nations Convention specifically related to the rights of people with disabilities; it became a reality largely due to active mobilization of those who participated in negotiating the text. For the EDF, this constitutes a historic achievement in the struggle against violations of the human rights of people with disabilities.

The instrumental Convention

The CRPD has set a number of precedents: it is the first major Human Rights treaty of the 21st century and the fastest to have been ratified by an impressive number of countries since its entry into force in 2008. With 143 signatories and 74 ratifications only just 32 months after opening the Convention for signatures, the UN CRPD sets an unprecedented record of commitment by the international community.

More Information >

Source: The African Union and the European Union partnership

At least one in five of the world’s poorest people are disabled but there is as yet no widespread acceptance or push to ensure that 20% of the poorest recipients of aid programmes are disabled.

Disabled people are so severely excluded from all areas of society that there is very little information or comparative data on the effects of disability on individual, family and community well being and almost no assessment of the economic implications of disability.

But there is a very strong link between disability and poverty which implies that there is not one of the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goal targets that can actually be met without now considering how to include disabled people.

But inclusion, or mainstreaming of disability into development programming is proving to be an enormous challenge. This paper sets out to highlight some of the main reasons why this may be the case and offer some recommendations for how to overcome them.

The Models of Disability: Individual and Social models

Summary

1. Social model of disability
2. Create policy commitments on disability inclusion
3. Collect disaggregated data on the economic and social situation of disabled people
4. Budget for access

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“Much has been accomplished, but the world continues its struggle to create societies in which disabled persons enjoy the same opportunities as other members of the human family, and are viewed and treated as equal partners in the social, cultural, political and economic life of our communities.”

Kofi Annan, Beirut, Lebanon, 3 December 2001.

What is disability?

The definition of disability has shifted over the past two or three decades. It used to be defined purely in medical terms as a health condition. This approach located ‘the problem of disability’ in the person with a disability and ‘the solution’ in treating the person with a disability. Now, disability is more often recognized as the interaction between a person and his or her environment, including the social, economic, legal and built environment. This understanding is endorsed by WHO and used in Australia [1].

Definitions – A disability advocacy approach

In an effort to promote the social model of disability – an approach that acknowledges three distinct barriers: attitudinal, institutional, and environmental, which marginalise and exclude people with impairments, it is important to understand the difference between disability and impairment. These two terms are often used interchangeably but have distinctly different meanings [2].

Impairment: “Any loss or abnormality of psychological, physiological, or anatomical structure or function”[3]

Disability: Is the outcome of the interaction between a person with an impairment and the attitudinal and the environmental barriers he/she may face [2].

Models of disability

Source: [2]

Publications & Resources

Fact Sheets

• NSW Department of Disability, Ageing and Home Care (DADHC)
  Disability Terminology Style Guide
• National Disability Services:
  What is Disability?
• Mobility International USA:
  Press Kit

In The News

• Disability World:
  Article by Amartya Sen and James D. Wolfensohn titled “Helping Disabled People Out of the Shadows” (2004)
• World Bank Development Outreach News:
  Disability Special (2005)

Manuals

• Department of Human Services (DHS) [VIC]:
  Communicating With People With Disabilities (2005)
• Healthlink Worldwide: Resource Centre Manual:
  How To Set Up and Manage a Resource Centre (2003)
• Oxfam and Action on Disability and Development:
  Disability, Equality, and Human Rights A Training Manual for Development and Humanitarian Organisations (2003)
• Tearfund:
  Advocacy Toolkit: Understanding Advocacy (2002)

Reports

• Community Based Rehabilitation Conference Paper:
  Strengthening the Role of Disabled People in Community Based Rehabilitation Programmes (2004)
• Handicap International:
  Understanding Community Approaches to Handicap in Development (2001)
• United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific:
  Focus on Ability, Celebrate Diversity: Highlights of the Asian and Pacific Decade of Disabled Persons, 1993-2002 (2003)
• World Health Organisation (WHO):
  Disability, Including Prevention, Management and Rehabilitation (2005)

Links

• Museum of Disability:
  Museum of Disability History
• Disability Awareness in Action:
  The international disability and human rights network
• Disability World:
  Interview with the International Institute for Disability Advocacy
• International Institute for Disability Advocacy:
  Provide undergraduate scholarships for students with disabilities from developing nations.
• Tear Fund:
  Advocacy Toolkit
• UK Disability Rights Commission:
  Video
• Working With Indigenous Peoples With Disability:
  Tools & materials for working with people with disabilities in remote indigenous communities
• SD Dimensions:
  Empowering the rural disabled in Asia and the Pacific

[Click here for other disability & development links]

References

1. National Disability Services, What is Disability? p. Fact sheet.
2. Harris, A. and S. Enfield, Disability, Equality and Human Rights: A training manual for development and humanitarian organisations, Oxfam, Editor. 2003, Oxfam & ADD: UK.
3. UN Enable, The United Nations and Disabled Persons -The First Fifty Years. 2003.

“Much has been accomplished, but the world continues its struggle to create societies in which disabled persons enjoy the same opportunities as other members of the human family, and are viewed and treated as equal partners in the social, cultural, political and economic life of our communities.”

Kofi Annan, Beirut, Lebanon, 3 December 2001.

What is disability?

The definition of disability has shifted over the past two or three decades. It used to be defined purely in medical terms as a health condition. This approach located ‘the problem of disability’ in the person with a disability and ‘the solution’ in treating the person with a disability. Now, disability is more often recognized as the interaction between a person and his or her environment, including the social, economic, legal and built environment. This understanding is endorsed by WHO and used in Australia [1].

A disability advocacy approach

In an effort to promote the social model of disability – an approach that acknowledges three distinct barriers: attitudinal, institutional, and environmental, which marginalise and exclude people with impairments, it is important to understand the difference between disability and impairment. These two terms are often used interchangeably but have distinctly different meanings [2].

Impairment: “Any loss or abnormality of psychological, physiological, or anatomical structure or function”[3]

Disability: Is the outcome of the interaction between a person with an impairment and the attitudinal and the environmental barriers he/she may face [2].

Models of Disability

Medical Model

• Views PwD as having physical problems to be cured
• PwD relegated to the passive role of patient, with medical personnel and care- professionals making many decisions
• Excessive focus on the desirability of fixing the disabled person’s impairment
• PwD become defined solely in terms of their diagnosis, as a patient with medical needs and no longer as a person with a whole range of needs.

Charity Model

• View PwD as victims of impairment and as the beneficiaries of charity, alms, and services
• Services are designed for them and delivered to them, perhaps with the best of intentions, but with insufficient consultation
• Carers may become unacceptably powerful, making decisions about what is best for those in their care.

Social Model

• Identifies three major barriers that confront PwD:
  • Physical (exclusion from the built environment)
  • Institutional (systematic exclusion or neglect in social, legal, educational, religious, and political institutions), and
  • Attitudinal (negative valuations of disabled people by non-disabled people)
• Removing these barriers is possible and has a hugely beneficial impact, both on the lives of disabled people and on the whole community

Source [2]

Publications and Resources

Presentation by: Charlotte McClain-Nhlapo, Senior Operations Officer – World Bank

Conference of State Parties, 31 October, 2008.

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as a human rights instrument and tool for achieving the Millennium Development Goals

If the substantive articles of the CRPD are applied in accordance with the general principles – they can act as a lever to achieving the MDGs.

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If the substantive articles of the CRPD are applied in accordance with the general principles – they can act as a lever to achieving the MDGs.