Introduction

Background of the Project

Katipunan ng Maykapansanan sa Pilipinas, Inc. (KAMPI) is a federation of cross-disability self-help grassroots organizations of Persons With Disabilities. Recognized as the "National Federation of organizations of people with disabilities in the Philippines", it was established on November 1990 to serve as the network that will give people with disabilities a voice in pushing for the implementation of relevant programs and policies for the sector. KAMPI's mission is to work for fully instituted structural changes and adjustments in society that would eliminate all barriers that hinder full participation of people with disabilities in all aspects of life.

There have been considerable legislative achievements in promoting the inclusion of people with disabilities in the Philippines. For instance, ILO Code of Practice on Managing Disability in the Workplace was adopted in 2001. It works to increase knowledge on the training and employment of people with disabilities, by carrying out applied research relating to policy and practice, compiling and disseminating information, publishing guidelines and manuals, and sponsoring other research and reports. Likewise, the Republic Act 7277 also known as The Magna Carta for Disabled Persons was passed in 1992. It supports the rehabilitation, development and provision of opportunities for people with disabilities and their integration into the mainstream of society. It created a national mandate for the elimination of discrimination against people with disabilities to bring them into the social and economic mainstream of Philippine society. More recently the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities has been adopted. This adoption was a major step forward for the cause of people with disabilities all over the world.

Despite the disability rights and protections endorsed in the laws and policies of the Philippine State, people with disabilities in this country confront many barriers to access education, employment and health and community services and goods, and are denied a life with quality and dignity. Many live in absolute poverty. To document and raise awareness about the kinds of rights abuses and violations that they experience in their everyday lives has become a social and political priority.

Disability Rights Promotion International (DRPI) is a collaborative project working to establish a monitoring system to address disability discrimination globally. Launched in 2002 DRPI has developed a set of monitoring tools, training instruments, and data collection methodologies to assess the human rights of people with disabilities in the global world. Through partnerships in various countries around the world, including Kenya, Cameroon, India, Bolivia, Canada, Australia and now the Philippines, DRPI has been engaged in disability rights training and monitoring activities that address important needs and issues in each country's unique context. The work of DRPI is based on the fulfillment of four principles: involvement of people with disabilities and their organizations in all aspects of the monitoring process, cross-disability, comprehensive and holistic approach in monitoring projects, and capacity building in the field of monitoring. Monitoring projects are conducted from a human rights perspective which means that human rights norms and principles are taken as standards in the assessment of policy and legal systems, individual experiences, and social representations of disability. In its monitoring work DRPI follows a 'twin-track approach' that recognizes the protection and promotion of disability rights, not only in the disability-specific Convention, but within all existing international human rights instruments. Specifically, the following general principles guide the monitoring work developed in the context of DRPI projects:

(a) Dignity

Dignity refers to the inherent worth of every person. Human rights are about protecting and promoting the dignity of all people.

(b) Autonomy

Autonomy is the right of an individual to make his or her own choices independently. Autonomy means that the person is placed at the centre of all decisions affecting him or her.

(c) Participation, Inclusion & Accessibility

Inclusion involves organizing systems of society, both public and private, to enable all people to participate fully and effectively. To achieve full participation, an accessible, barrier-free physical and social environment is necessary. This includes access to transportation; election access; access to water supply and sanitation; technology access; appropriate sources of communication and media to ensure information.

(d) Non-Discrimination & Equality

The principle of non-discrimination means that all rights are guaranteed to everyone, without distinction, exclusion or restriction based on disability or race, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, age, or any other status. Discrimination means any distinction, exclusion or restriction which has the purpose or effect of denying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by persons with disabilities, on an equal footing, of all human rights and basic freedoms.

Equality does not mean that women, people of colour or people with disabilities will become the same as men, white people or people without a disability. Rights, responsibilities and opportunities will not depend on whether they are born male or female, white or black, without or with a disability. Equality, in the context of disability requires creating societal conditions that allow for difference while addressing disadvantage, in order to guarantee the equal participation and inclusion of people with disabilities in all aspects of society.

(e) Respect for Difference

Respect for difference involves acceptance of persons with disabilities as part of human diversity and humanity. Despite some visible or apparent differences, all people have the same rights and dignity. The responsibility to change falls not on the individual but on the State and civil society who must accept diversity and respond to the difference that disability represents.

All of the general human rights principles apply equally to men, women, boys and girls.

Objectives of the Project

The DRPI-Philippines project aims at monitoring the human rights situation of people with disabilities in the Philippines. It involves an environmental scan of the laws and policies in place in the Filipino territory that protect and promote the human rights of people with disabilities and an overview of the disability movement in the country. It further encompasses the analysis of personal stories collected through face-to-face in-depth interviews with people with disabilities in different regions of the nation to document their human rights experiences. Monitoring the human rights situation of people with disabilities is a necessary step to understand whether the legal and policy instruments in place are adequate and effective on the ground, as well as to determine the extent of human rights violations affecting the disability sector in different regions of the country.

The elaboration and dissemination of monitoring reports constitutes an important objective of this project. Reports on the data collected and analyzed, such as this one, will be disseminated to the many diverse organizations of people with disabilities, other individual persons, groups or organizations that are working to improve the lives of people with disabilities, groups who have a key interest in human rights for all people, the media, government agencies and legislators. The reports provide society with information about violations of the rights of people with disabilities; they address existing infringements of disability rights and provide information to prevent future rights violations of people with disabilities. They can serve as the tangible evidence to support advocacy for changes in laws, policies, and programs to improve the lives of people with disabilities. Most importantly, the reports provide a benchmark to monitor the Philippine government's progress in fulfilling the commitments it has made to people with disabilities through its ratification of UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

Finally, this project has sought to develop a sustainable system to ensure that disability rights data collection continues beyond the duration of this particular initiative. This has been achieved by creating networks of people to monitor disability rights and by building monitoring capacity within those networks. The project has therefore contributed to the development of a technical infrastructure to sustain the collection, analysis and storage of data to monitor the human rights of people with disabilities in the future. Article 33 of the CRPD requires governments to establish a mechanism to monitor the implementation of the Convention, and urges State Parties to involve people with disabilities in this process. This project provides people with disabilities and their organizations with the necessary tools to undertake that task.

Research questions

Specifically, this project attempted to find answers to three broad questions.

1. What are the laws and policy mechanisms in the Philippines to protect and advance the human rights of people with disabilities?
2. How are people with disabilities experiencing their civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights?
3. How is the exercise of rights by people with disabilities affected by intersecting forms of disadvantage such as gender, ethnicity, geographic location, age, education level and income level?

Methodology

Research Design

The project used a multi-method approach combining multiple research techniques and methodologies, notably:

1. At the Systems Level: Collection and review of relevant Philippine legislation as well as of information on the Filipino Disability Movement and on other national government agencies who are central to the provision of programs for people with disabilities; gathering and analysis of data on current socio-economic demographics.
2. At the Individual Level: Collection and analysis of individual human rights experiences of people with disabilities through fieldwork in four research sites. The fieldwork involved face to face interviews with people with disabilities in their actual places or location, conducted by trained monitors who are themselves people with disabilities. One hundred ten (110) interviews were conducted in the four identified sites.

Methodologies for Monitoring at the Individual Level

Sampling

The project's Management Team chose four areas in the Philippines: National Capital region (NCR), Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, to be the monitoring study sites. The sites reflected the diversity of cultures in terms of dialects, ethnicity, levels of overall poverty, levels of literacy, access to technology, information and communication.

The team used a snowball sampling technique to identify research participants. Statistically speaking, snowball sampling is a non-probability sampling procedure, most often used in qualitative research, that allows access to difficult to reach, marginalized groups such as persons with disabilities. A small group (5-6 people) was identified as potential interviewees at the outset of the project through contacts in local organizations of people with disabilities. At the end of each interview, the monitors asked the interviewee if they would recommend someone else to be interviewed. The next people interviewed would be selected from these recommendations. In each site, 25-30 persons with disability were interviewed. The sample balanced for gender, age (18+), educational attainment, type of disability and social status.

Total sample size of the survey was one hundred (100) people with disabilities equally distributed among the 4 major geographic groups or clusters, namely:

• National Capital Region (NCR or Metro Manila): 25
• Luzon: 25
• Mindanao: 25
• Visayas: 25

Persons with disabilities as Monitors

The involvement of organizations of people with disabilities and people with disabilities individually in all aspects of the monitoring projects is a foundational principle of all DRPI projects. The monitors who conducted the interviews were persons with disabilities themselves who had received intensive training on human rights principles and interview techniques in the context of this project. As in the past, the presence of monitors who are themselves people with disabilities helped interviewees to disclose their personal stories and to feel safe while describing very intimate and often painful experiences

Data Collection and Analysis

To assist with data collection at the Individual Level a monitoring tool was provided by DRPI. The tool uses the standards defined in international human rights instruments, including the UN Disability Convention to collect individual human rights experiences of people with disabilities.

The tool consists of a series of close-ended and semi-structured questions which were developed to ensure that people with disabilities have an opportunity to tell their own story and to identify those rights issues that are most important to them. Time reference of individual experiences was the last 5 years.

With the informed consent of the interviewees, interviews were audio-recorded and some were video-taped (when both the monitor and the interviewee had hearing impairments). The recorded interviews were then transferred to CD for transcribing, translation to English and data processing. Detailed records of interviewees' demographic characteristics and experiences were also gathered at each site. (See appendices for a copy of the monitoring tool entitled Interview Questionnaire).

Data processing was done using NVivo 8, on the basis of a Coding Scheme provided by DRPI.

Scope and Limitation of the Study

This study is the first of its kind for the disability sector in the Philippines. For the first time people with disabilities were given the opportunity to voice their rights' experiences, and make recommendations for social and political change. Coverage of the survey could be considered nationwide since it encompassed the four major geographic areas, i.e., National Capital Region, Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

Since the purpose of this project has been to describe and document situations of realization and/or violation of human rights, as these are experienced by persons with disabilities, this study has taken a qualitative approach. In studies of qualitative nature, the validity of the study is not determined by its margin of error (as in quantitative research), but by the credibility of the results from the perspective of the participants in the research process. The results are not intended to be generalized as representative of the Filipino population with disability, as would be the case with a large scale quantitative survey. Instead, data elicited with this project stand on their own, as powerful illustrations of the kinds of violations, abuses, but also achievements of persons with disabilities in the Philippines.

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