Suggestion Paper
DPI/AP
Development of a Disability Strategy for Australia’s Aid Program (AusAID)
2.1 Definition
Disability is the functional limitation within the individual caused by physical, mental,
Intellectual or sensory impairment included those who have long-term aforementioned, impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others. (Source: DPI constitution and CRPD Article 1)
Handicap is the loss or limitation of opportunities to take part in the normal life of
the community on an equal level with others due physical or social barriers. (Sources: DPI constitution, UNESCAP: Non handicapping environment)
2.2 Social Inclusion
ADD greater emphasis on women with disabilities and children with disabilities
Fact:
Women perspective
1. man power
2. family belonging
3. work at home
4. sexual abuse
5. gender bias ext.
6. social roles: wife and mother are considered as primary role of women
Disability perspective (Source: Asia Pacific Development Center on Disability--APCD)
- negative attitude such as traditional beliefs or attitudinal barriers
2. discrimination
3. violence and Human rights abuse
4. physical barrier
5. systematic barrier
6. information and technological barrier
7. Social standard: WWDs can not be mother, bare a child.
2 perspectives, gender and disability, push women with disabilities into the corner of marginalized group being poorest of the poor; lacking money and opportunity because they can not exercise their rights, civil and human rights, these two factors deprive WWDs to access to natural resources, resources provided by Governmental organization (GOs) and other funding support, thus making it very difficult for WWDs to get out of poverty circle. It is necessary to understand clearly why and how women with disabilities are the most marginalized compared to women without disabilities. Disability becomes more of a disadvantage when compounded by low socio-economic and educational status. Women with disabilities, therefore, who are poor and illiterate, are worse off than men with disabilities under the same conditions. In of Asian countries, women are assigned a low status culturally. Given this biased cultural set-up, limited resources are provided at the national, community and household level in a developing country. These are bad investment to spend on educating a disabled girl child, adolescent or woman and to rehabilitate them so that they can't be mainstreaming into the community as productive and equal members (Source: Fahmeeda Hahab, Development Advice, Canadian High Commission Bangladesh, Disabled women in Rural areas of the region, http://www.fao.org/sd/PPdirect/PPre0042.htm.)
International level: Article 6 (Women with disabilities) – recognizes the multiple discrimination faced by women and girls with disabilities, and obligates States Parties to take measures to ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by women and girls with disabilities. States Parties must also ensure “the full development, advancement and empowerment of women,” so that women may exercise and enjoy the human rights and fundamental freedoms in the Convention.
Article 7 (Children with disabilities) – obligates States Parties to take all necessary measures to ensure the full enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by children with disabilities on an equal basis with others. It requires that the “best interests of the child” be the “primary consideration” in “all actions concerning children with disabilities.” States Parties must also ensure that children with disabilities have the “right to express their views freely on all matters affecting them,” that they receive assistance to realize this right, and that their views be given due weight. (Source: The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities)
A/P Regional Guidelines: Biwako Millennium Framework (BMF) states the mainstream gender movement, which has had a significant effect on improving the equality of lives of non-disabled women, has had minimal effect on the lives of women with disabilities. Women with disabilities have not been included in membership of mainstream gender organizations, their issues have not been addressed other than to note that they are of special concern and they have lacked the advocacy skills to change this situation.
(Source: http://www.unescap.org/esid/psis/disability/bmf/bmf.html )
Relationship between Rights and Poverty
People with disabilities are in the corner of marginalized group being poorest of the poor; lacking money and opportunity because they can not exercise their rights, civil and human rights, these two factors deprive them to access to natural resources, resources provided by Governmental organization (GOs) and other funding support, thus making it very difficult for people with disabilities to get out of poverty circle. (See diagram 1) It is necessary to understand clearly why and how people with disabilities are the most marginalized compared to other vulnerable groups Disability becomes more of a disadvantage when compounded by low socio-economic and educational status. These are bad investment to spend on educating a disabled girl child, adolescent or women disabilities and to rehabilitate them so that they can't be mainstreaming into the community as productive and equal members.
Diagram 1: the vicious cycle of poverty of people with disabilities
Empowerment
(Source: Asia Pacific Development center on Disability--APCD concept chart)
2.3 Models of Disability
Social Model: Awareness of the reality of disability is limited because we live in a society geared towards people whose bodies and minds are fully functioning. This may seem strange when one considers that disability or illness can happen to anyone at any moment of their lives - it is an inevitable part of the human experience. Nevertheless, society is organized in such a way as to treat disability as an exceptional circumstance that requires special and, in the main, separate provision which is often inadequate and serves only to maintain the divisions and lack of understanding between able-bodied and disabled people. In recent years, however, many public and private sector bodies have gradually realized that their work practices and policies fall far short of fulfilling the needs, rights and aspirations of people with disabilities who are their clients, customers and coworkers and that, in order to change this situation, they need to turn to people with disabilities for education and guidance. From this realization has grown the demand for awareness raising run by people with disabilities, which aims to help people understand the meaning of disability, identify changes in work practice, and plan strategies to implement change.
IMPAIRMENT + DISENABLING FACTOR = DISABILITY
PERSON WITH IMPAIRMENT + EXPERIENCE OF DISENABLING FACTOR
= DISABLED PERSON
There are four major barriers that confront persons with disabilities who have impairments, physical barrier or exclusion from the built environment, institutional or systematic exclusion or neglect in social, legal, education, religious and political institutions, attitudinal barrier and information and technology barrier. (Source: APCD concept chart) The social model has allowed many people with disabilities to regain control of their own lives, becoming the experts on their own experience and changing their outlook in fundamental ways, and social model provides a radically different framework with to understand the discrimination that arises as a result of impairment. For DPOs , the social model describes the true nature of the problem of disability that the problem is not in the individual, nor his or her impairment, the problem of disability lies in society’s response to the individual and the impairment, and in the four major barriers. Disability takes on a social dimension and leads to social exclusion and the denial of human rights. The solution to the problems of disability must come from changes with the families, communities and societies in which people with disabilities are living in, rather than form changes in the impaired individual.
Adopting the social model of disability does not mean rejecting and form of medical services, rehabilitation, or assistance form others but it does change the way in which those services and assistance should be given, placing them in the wider context of people with disabilities’ lives.(Source: Disability, Equality, and Human Rights, Alison Harries with Sue Enfield, Oxfam ).
Disability in the context of Development
In the community development field, the most common approach to disability emphasizes rehabilitation which this approach designed to deliver rehabilitation services through accessible and cost effective mechanisms and its implementation differs in almost every situation which has moved out of institution to be delivering in the community.
Current attitudes and approaches should be reserved to allow people with disabilities, to participate in the definition of their needs and the design of projects to address those needs and to include them in the management of systems to deliver benefits included women with disabilities as beneficiaries and as organizers of development activities to address the needs of women. The basic development principle of involving beneficiaries in identifying and prioritizing needs in influencing decisions about a range of possible solutions and in managing and monitoring project activities.
Twin Track approach suggests that it still necessary to run development activities designed to address particular needs of people with disabilities through sector-specific project such as the provision of wheelchairs, hearing aids, it is also vital to address disability as a cross cutting theme, considering the needs of all sectors of a diverse population in other development project. All development staff should automatically consider the needs of people with disabilities within their target population
Mainstream development program may inadvertently discrimination against people with disabilities and excluded them if they do not apply a Disability Equality analysis. If staffs responsible are not aware of the needs and capabilities of people with disabilities they may bring their own prejudices into decision making.
A new approach for human rights
As a human rights convention, the CRPD addresses disability issues in a human rights context. Although organizations like DPI have been calling for some time for disability to be addressed as a human rights issue (rather than a medical, charity, or social welfare issue), the CRPD is the first legally binding international document to do so. With the adoption of the CRPD, disability advocates now have a powerful tool to use in framing their advocacy in human rights terms!
But what does using a “rights based approach” really mean? According to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), rights-based approaches involve the following:
1. Express linkage to human rights – here this means linking disability issues to the full range of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, and it means talking about disability issues using the language of human rights. The CRPD does this, meaning that we can use the CRPD as a helpful tool when we are thinking about how to frame our advocacy in rights-based terms. For example, when discussing the educational needs of youth with disabilities, the CRPD helps us to talk about these issues not just as “needs”, but also as legally enforceable rights. Also, because all human rights are interrelated and interdependent (meaning that our enjoyment of each right affects our ability to enjoy other rights), a rights-based approach would also require us to think what other rights are important to the enjoyment of the right to education. For example, aside from the accessibility of schools and provision of accommodations for students with disabilities, etc., thinking in rights-based terms would prompt us to also consider issues like: liberty of movement, and whether students have access to transportation in order to get to school; the right to an adequate standard of living, and whether students have access to the food, water, shelter and clothing they need to be able to perform their best in school; the right to health, and whether students have access to the health care services that they need in order to be healthy enough to attend school and perform their best, whether such health care is provided on the basis of free and informed consent, and whether students are free from medical interventions to control behavior; and whether students with disabilities have access to supports of their own choosing. So adopting a rights-based approach to disability issues provides a useful framework that we can use to assess the full range of factors and rights that positively or negatively affect our enjoyment of specific rights.
2. Accountability – using a rights-based approach requires identifying who are the rights-holders (the people claiming their rights) and who are the duty-holders (the people who have the duty to protect and promote enjoyment of the rights in question, i.e. they must not violate the rights and they must take action to ensure enjoyment of the rights by the rights-holders). Under international law , it is governments at the national/domestic level who are ultimately responsible for the enjoyment of human rights within their countries. However, additional actors, including private actors (such as businesses, individuals, etc.), can act to promote or undercut the enjoyment of human rights. As long as governments can exercise control over them (e.g. through legislation and regulations), governments are responsible for the behavior of these private actors too. Identifying the full range of duty-holders can help us to effectively direct our advocacy and ensure that all relevant actors are held accountable for the protection and promotion of our human rights.
3. Empowerment – rights-based approaches focus on the empowerment of rights-holders. This is the opposite of a charitable approach, where the recipients of the charity are passive and have no say in what action is taken. The objective here is to give rights-holders the “power, capacities, capabilities and access” needed for them to claim their human rights and take charge of their own lives. The philosophical approach of the CRPD is consistent with the need to empower persons with disabilities to actively claim their rights.
4. Participation – rights-based approaches require the full participation of all relevant stakeholders. This requires that persons with disabilities be meaningful participants along with other stakeholders. The CRPD requires that governments consult with persons with disabilities and their representative organizations in decision-making processes that affect the lives of persons with disabilities.
5. Non-discrimination and areas of particular attention – rights-based approaches call for specific attention to issues like discrimination, equality, equity and persons who have been particularly marginalized. Within the disability community this not only means addressing the discrimination faced by persons with disabilities in general, but also the specific and additional discrimination faced by groups within the community, e.g. women with disabilities, children with disabilities, indigenous persons with disabilities, etc. When actions are taken to ensure the enjoyment of human rights by persons with disabilities, specific attention should be given to ensuring that all persons with disabilities are able to benefit from those actions. The CRPD can be helpful in identifying those who have been particularly marginalized and understanding the steps that need to be taken to eliminate the discrimination against them.