Executive Summary
In the field of human rights, particularly of the rights of persons with disabilities, Colombia is internationally known for being the 100th country to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). But it is also known for being a State that still has the unfinished business of promoting and enforcing the acknowledgement and actual enjoyment of the rights of persons with disabilities.
This report deals with the growing issue of the rights of persons with disabilities, but not from a basic standpoint, nor by identifying the CRPD as a political tool and as a potential for change which does not move beyond discourse. Rather, it seeks to provide the reader with an experience-based picture of the current status of the rights of persons with disabilities, scientifically and empirically proven through specific monitoring in this area. In other words, this report shows evidence of today's huge pre-existing gap between the government's promises and the reality of the lives of people with disabilities.
At the same time, this report innovates in giving a prominent role to a group of people with disabilities who had been invisible up to now, or who were not protagonists within the community, not even within the very sector of people with disabilities, simply due to lack of awareness, of self-representation, or of self-acknowledgement, among others. Thus, this project has included people with psychosocial disabilities into the process of adaptation, training on the methodology, and implementation of the monitoring system, trying, for the first time, to listen to their voices and reflect their feelings about how they live their human rights every day. Although we acknowledge the need of a comprehensive view of disability and its related issues, it is equally important to point out specific claims and distinctive situations in relation to specific groups. Therefore, and as this is an integral initiative, special attention has been paid to this group of people to show their realities.
That having been said, this work has two central focal points constituting the basic pillars of this process of analysis and observation: the reader will find detailed information revealed by the monitoring of the rights of persons with disabilities, as well as specific mention of the main lessons that people with psychosocial disabilities denote and intend to transmit.
With the purpose of achieving these goals, we propose the following journey; it intends to be deep and dynamic, practical and transcendental, all at the same time. But above all, it aims at being faithful to the local reality of our country and our disabled citizens.
Firstly, in order to understand what we mean when referring to disabilities in Colombia and how people with disabilities of any kind live in our country, we will devote a section to two key aspects. The first one has to do with the types of predominant paradigms or approaches in our country, and how much of the human rights paradigm is actually instilled in our society. At the same time, we will discuss the macro context of our nation and how the political, economic, and social variables among others exert an influence when it comes to speaking about disabilities.
Secondly, we will stop to explain clearly the methodology used to achieve the results and the analysis detailed on this document. Undoubtedly, the method used throughout this initiative allows its empirically proven objective verification. But it also intends to provide the reader with an understanding of how and why the different stages were carried out, and what their related conclusions are.
Next, the main topics that people with disabilities have focused on will be outlined and described. Thus, issues like employment, education, healthcare, housing, social participation, among others, will be approached with the goal of understanding what have been, and still are, the most important affairs.
Finally, and so this thorough work is not merely expository or descriptive, we intend to contribute some recommendations and, at least an idea of, what should be the issues demanding urgent and all-encompassing attention on the part of the responsible stakeholders.
2. Antecedents
This report is the result of a research process conducted within the framework of the project to monitor the rights of persons with disabilities in Colombia, which included a pilot project on psychosocial disability. The initiative was led by Fundamental Colombia, with the technical and financial support of: Disability Rights Promotion International (DRPI); York University, Toronto (Canada); and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) in association with the Latin American Network of Non-Governmental Organizations of Persons with Disabilities and their Families (RIADIS).
The purpose of this project is to build and strengthen the capacities of persons with disabilities, and to create an organization of disabled people for the surveillance and enforcement of the human rights of these people. It intends to do so by collecting and analyzing data based on a holistic approach to the rights of persons with disabilities, which includes:
- The individual experiences of persons with disabilities;
- Systematic measures adopted to protect and improve the rights of persons with disabilities (laws, policies, programs).
This part of the holistic approach allows to see the rights of persons with disabilities in various ways and contexts –providing a better understanding of the realities facing people with disabilities in their everyday lives–, as well as the relation of these rights with some laws, policies, and programs oriented to people with social disabilities.
To implement this initiative, Fundamental Colombia, with the support of the DRPI Latin America Regional Centre (Buenos Aires, Argentina), organized an open call for participation in this project about the monitoring of human rights, proposed by DRPI and implemented in different countries worldwide (Kenya, Cameroon, India, Bolivia, Philippines, Canada, New Zealand, Argentina, and Honduras). Over 450 people with disabilities from all over the country responded to this call. Among these, there were selected 40 men and women with physical, hearing, visual, cognitive, psychosocial, and multiple disabilities, members of organizations such as: Fundación Ejemplos de Vida, Asociación Afásicos, ARTEBOCA, Asociación Colombiana de Bipolares, Bipolares Eje Cafetero, Asociación Colombiana de Personas con Esquizofrenia (ACPEF), Asociación Colombiana de Conciliadores en Equidad (ACCE), FUNDAAFECTIVOS, Fundación Ángeles de Amor, Coordinadora Nacional de Limitados Visuales (CONALIVI), Centro de Rehabilitación de Adultos Ciegos (CRAC), Liga de Visuales Bogotá, JENADISCOLOMBIA, and Fundamental Colombia. There were also selected some local disability advisers acting as representatives of the people with disabilities from different localities of Bogota, to carry out a theoretical and practical training program in topics related to human rights, United Nations conventions, and the implementation of the monitoring methodology.
The participants were empowered and their technical skills were developed, to implement an integral system to follow-up on the human rights of persons with disabilities in Colombia. Once the training was finished, work teams were defined to conduct interviews about individual experiences. Additionally, another group was devoted to the analysis of laws, policies, and programs within the framework of the learned methodology.
In the context of this monitoring project, Colombia was divided into three areas to conduct the individual interviews, as follows: the Central Area, including central cities of the country, Bogotá, Ibague, and some rural areas of Cundinamarca such as La Mesa and Las Mesitas; the Coffee Triangle Area, including cities like Medellin, Pereira, and Armenia; and the Pacific Area, including the city of Quibdó in El Choco.