Section 1.1 - Introduction to the Global Situation of Persons with Disabilities

1. The Global Picture of Disability

Here are some facts from international organizations about the lives of persons with disabilities around the world:

• There are approximately 785 to 975 million persons with disabilities (over age 15) in the world. In some countries they make up more than 15.6% of the population. Persons with disabilities are the world’s largest minority group (WHO World Report on Disability, 2011).
• 80% of persons with disabilities live in developing countries. (UN Development Programme, 2011)
• 20% of the world’s poorest people have some kind of disability and tend to be regarded in their own communities as the most disadvantaged. Persons with disabilities are often the ‘poorest of the poor’. (World Bank, 2008)
• 80% of persons with disabilities live in rural areas. (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Factsheet)
• Women and girls with disabilities are recognized as having multiple disadvantages. They experience exclusion because of both their gender and their disability. They are particularly vulnerable to abuse. (UNENABLE, Factsheet, 2011).
• 30% of youth who live rough (that is, live on the streets) have some kind of disability (UNENABLE, Factsheet, 2011).
• Death rates for children with disabilities may be as high as 80% in some countries. (UN UN, Factsheet, 2006)
• In countries with life expectancies over 70 years, people spend an average of 8 years living with disabilities. (UNENABLE, Factsheet, 2011)
• Only 45 countries have anti-discrimination or other disability-specific laws. (UNENABLE, Factsheet, 2011)
• By September, 2011, 149 countries had signed and 103 had ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Similarly, 90 countries had signed and 62 had ratified its Optional Protocol. (UN Enable website, 2011)

2. Discrimination Faced by Persons with Disabilities around the World

Many children and adults with disabilities are ignored. Their rights are not recognized. They do not have chances to participate in the activities of their communities. Schools refuse to accept them as children. Employers do not hire them as adults.

Persons with disabilities continue to face discrimination in both the richest and poorest countries of the world. Here are examples of some of the many ways that the human rights of persons with disabilities are violated on a daily basis:

• A man in India says that he has not been paid properly for any of the jobs that he has held because he is a person with a disability.
• A woman in Bolivia enters a hospital to deliver her baby and the nurses will not take care of her.
• A child in the United States is denied the right to go to school with her brothers and sisters because she has an intellectual disability.
• A young man with a disability is put on the street to beg in Hong Kong.
• A man who is blind falls off a bridge with a broken guardrail in Jamaica and is severely injured.
• A man in Kenya explains his experience of discrimination on the basis of disability: Sometimes I feel that I am in prison.
• A woman in Canada is left to lie for hours in her soiled bed by an abusive personal attendant.
• A woman with a psychiatric disability in Uruguay has been in a hospital for 20 years waiting for her sister to pick her up.
• A young man with an intellectual disability in Sudan is tied to the ground by a rope inside a tent. His family does not want him to get lost and they don’t know what to do or where to take him.
• A woman in Nepal is abandoned by her husband after he has taken her dowry.

Causes of Discrimination

Persons with disabilities are often denied basic human rights. There are many reasons why this happens including:

• Myths/Misinformation
• Attitudes
• Language
• Social and Legal Barriers
• Environmental Barriers

Myths/Misinformation

In many societies, what people think about persons with disabilities comes from myths and misinformation that consider persons with disabilities as:

• sick, deformed or undesirable
• throwaways
• non-people
• menaces (bringing disease, danger)
• people to make fun of

These myths have been used to deny rights and entitlements to persons with disabilities. Even though most people will experience some form of disability at some point in their lives, people who do not have disabilities often treat people who have disabilities as ‘others’ (that is, as a separate group, different from others and isolated.

Attitudes

Over time, persons with disabilities have been seen in many negative ways. For example, persons with disabilities have been considered carriers of sin, demons, bad luck, helpless dependents, in need of charity and second class citizens.

When people have negative attitudes or ideas toward persons with disabilities they put up invisible barriers that limit the experiences and opportunities of persons with disabilities. For example, because of negative attitudes, persons with disabilities have been:

• isolated in institutions and special schools or in their homes
• taught to be ashamed of themselves and their disabilities
• controlled by caregivers by being told what to do, and when and how to do it.

In all countries, these negative attitudes have led to the exclusion of persons with disabilities through social, legal and environmental barriers including degrading language.

Language

An important way that people are left out is through language. Words that highlight the differences between persons with disabilities in a negative way – whether used by professionals like doctors, therapists and teachers, written in newspapers or spoken in the street - make people feel that they are not valued. This language often leads to people making fun of or shunning persons with disabilities because of those differences.

Consider these different ways of talking about persons with disabilities:

Social and Legal Barriers

In many places, laws, policies and practices put in place by governments and others in the community or country have meant that persons with disabilities have been denied their basic human rights including such rights as:

• the right to live;
• the right to vote;
• the right to marry;
• the right to work;
• the right to have children and raise families;
• the right to inherit property;
• the right to go to school;
• the right to access the same services that other people have and specific services that persons with disabilities need

Environmental Barriers

Environmental barriers have also resulted in exclusion. An environmental barrier is created when buildings, products, services or open spaces are designed or work in a way that makes it difficult for persons with disabilities to use them.

Environmental barriers create obstacles that prevent persons with disabilities from equal participation in their communities and their societies. For example, a person with a psycho-social disability might have difficulty dealing with the amount of information found in a grocery store. A person who uses a wheelchair might not be able to travel on a sidewalk or road that has potholes. A person who is blind might have difficulty finding his doctor’s office in a building that does not have Braille signs or door markers.

Universal design is an approach to the design of products, services and environments that makes them usable by as many people as possible regardless of age, ability or situation. Universal design recognizes that many different people live in a communitiy and takes that into acount from the beginning. However, no matter how good universal design is, it still might not accommodate all persons with disabilities. To be sure that everyone is included, it is important to keep looking for additional adaptations.

A variety of barriers can negatively affect people with disabilities

Over the past forty years, persons with disabilities around the world have stopped seeing themselves as ‘sick’, ‘tragic’ or ‘different’. They are seeing themselves as people like everyone else and members of their communities. Through their involvement in the disability rights movement, persons with disabilities have come to recognize that often the way they are treated is unfair and discriminatory. Disability is another characteristic just like gender, age, and race. There is nothing ‘abnormal’ about persons with disabilities. Everyone is different in some way and so are persons with disabilities. The world is like a patchwork quilt – each piece of the quilt is different but all people are part of the quilt.

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