Article of the Week

International Convention focuses on Inclusion

Way back in the 70s, Frank Bowe, a disability rights activist from the US had written a monograph ‘Handicapping America’ (1978) in which he tried to explain how the key issue in any debate around disability is the social response to it. For Bowe, the main point was not the status of physical or mental impairments of a particular person, but the way society developed its goals to cope with it.

One can easily understand why for people like Bowe, the adoption of ‘International Convention of the Protection and Promotion of the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities’ is a vindication of their long cherished idea. The enormity of the challenge, which faces humanity vis-à-vis the question of disability, can be gauged from the fact that 10% of world’s population is disabled. The World Health Organisation for example, estimates that there are as many as 600 million persons with disabilities. The United Nations estimate is 650 million. There is also widespread agreement among experts that disability is more common in developing than in developed nations.

The key thinking behind the Convention is that welfare and charity should be replaced by new rights and freedom. It also recognizes that a change of attitude is vital, if disabled people are to achieve equal status, and countries that ratify the convention will be obliged to combat negative stereotypes and prejudices and to promote an awareness of people’s abilities. Access to public spaces and buildings as well as transport, information and communication will also have to be improved. For countries like India, the important provision in the article is that it obliges governments to expand the reach of inclusive education – the education of disabled children together with the non-disabled ones. The basic idea is to do away with ‘special schools’ which are specially run for these differently abled children.

Interestingly, till early 80s the dominant trend in the disability discourse revolved around adoption of ‘social welfare measure’ and the world was a bit far away from taking it up as a ‘human rights issue’. It’s a different matter that things really started moving since then and the resolve of the international community to fight the scourage of disability became clear when United Nations decided to celebrate 1981 as the Year of the Disabled. The UN Decade of Disabled Persons (1983-1993) featured a World Programme of Action Concerning Disabled Persons. In between, much was accomplished. For example, in 1984, UNESCO accepted sign languages for use in education of deaf children and youth.

It is being said that countries that sign the treaty would be required to adopt new laws, and remove old ones, so that persons with disabilities could have the right to own and inherit property, are not discriminated against in marriage, are not unwilling subjects in medical experiments and have equal rights to education, employment and cultural life.

Despite its tremendous importance this treaty carries for around ten percent population of the world (which can be considered ‘disabled’ or differently able’), the silence which has accompanied its adoption in the mainstream media is troubling. In fact it is just a marker of the subtle manner in which the mainstream society practices what is or can be called ‘ableism’.

Advocates for the disabled argue that ableism is like racism and sexism, a reaction of mainstream society on the derogatory physical or intellectual capacities in combinations with behavior of disabled persons. An ableist society tends to isolate the disabled, where an inclusive society tends to integration or include.

As rightly noted by Don Mackay, ambassador of New Zealand, and Chairman of the adhoc committee, the convention has forced states to develop a different way of thinking about disability issues. “Once you get the paradigm... and people adopt a ‘can do’ rather than a ‘cant do’ approach, a whole lot of other things can well flow from there.”

Source: Disability debate takes a shift, Sahara Times, Weekly, New Delhi, 14 Oct 2006.