"VAN" (Europe Bureau - Aleksey Vesyoliy) :: About 1 billion people or about 15 % of the world’s population in the world live with some form of disability. Nearly 200 million persons with disabilities experience considerable difficulties in functioning.
It was originally called "International Day of Disabled Persons" until 2007 and each year the day focuses on a different issue. The theme for 2019 is "The Future is Accessible".
International Day of People with Disabilities is a special time to celebrate the achievements and contributions as well as increase public awareness, understanding and acceptance of people with disability
In many societies, persons with disabilities face with isolation and discrimination and are more likely to live in poverty than persons without disabilities due to barriers in society such as discrimination, limited access to education and employment and lack of inclusion in livelihood and other social programmes.
The vital purpose is to improve the understanding towards the people with disability issues as well as get together to support them to improve their self-esteem, well-being and rights in the society and promote more active engagement in political, economic, social and cultural activities.
Youth with disabilities are among the most marginalized and poorest of the world’s youth population and are more likely to face severe social, economic, and civic disparities as compared with those without disabilities, even in developed countries. For many young people with disabilities, exclusion, isolation, and abuse as well as lack of educational and economic opportunities are daily experiences. While young people in general experience poverty at higher rates than their older counterparts, youth with disabilities are especially at risk of falling at or below the poverty line. Households including persons with disabilities often have lower incomes than those not affected by disability as family members may sacrifice wage-earning activities in order to take on care-giving roles at home.
Health is also affected by environmental factors, such as safe water and sanitation, nutrition, poverty, working conditions, climate, or access to health care. A person’s environment has a huge impact on the experience and extent of disability.
Data shows that the proportion of persons with disabilities living under the national or international poverty line is higher, and in some countries double, than that of persons without disabilities. This is particularly the case for women and girls with disabilities. Main barriers to inclusion entail discrimination and stigma on the ground of disability, lack of accessibility to physical and virtual environments, lack of access to assistive technology, essential services, rehabilitation and support for independent living that are critical for the full and equal participation of persons with disabilities as agents of change and beneficiaries of development.
Recently published United Nations Flagship Report on Disability and Development 2018 shows that despite the progress made in recent years, persons with disabilities continue to face numerous barriers to their full inclusion and participation in the life of their communities. Data pays attention on people with disability disproportionate levels of poverty, lack of access to education, health services, employment, under-representation in decision-making and political participation. Available data reveals that, persons with disabilities remain less likely to attend school and complete primary education and more likely to be illiterate than persons without disabilities.
Persons with disabilities continue to have limited access to the labour market. All across the globe, persons with disabilities experience higher rates of unemployment and underemployment than non-disabled persons. When employed, they are also more likely to have low paid jobs with poor career prospects than people without disabilities. Women with disabilities are particularly disadvantaged in the labour market due to the fact that they frequently experience multiple discrimination based on their gender and their disability status. The lack of equal employment opportunities for people with disabilities forms one of the root causes of the poverty and exclusion of many members of this group. Unemployment rates for youth with disabilities are higher than for the rest of the youth population in every society. While inequities in education and vocational training resources can negatively impact the employment options available to persons with disabilities, negative attitudes about disability and discrimination based on disability status may also create significant barriers to long term, appropriately compensated employment. If employment is obtained, youth with disabilities are typically given little room and may labelled unemployable if they encounter struggles on the job. For young women with disabilities, the situation is even worse as they are forced to work against disability and gender based societal prejudices.
In 2006, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol towards protection of the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities, which requires associated parties to promote and protect their human rights. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is an international human rights treaty of the United Nations intended to protect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities. Parties to the Convention are required to promote, protect, and ensure the full enjoyment of human rights by persons with disabilities and ensure that they enjoy full equality under the law.
The Article 8 of Convention stresses the awareness raising to foster respect for the rights and dignity against discrimination:
1. To raise awareness throughout society, including at the family level, regarding persons with disabilities, and to foster respect for the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities.
2. To combat stereotypes, prejudices and harmful practices relating to persons with disabilities, including those based on sex and age, in all areas of life.
3. To promote awareness of the capacities and contributions of persons with disabilities.
4. Initiating and maintaining effective public awareness campaigns designed:
(i) to nurture receptiveness to the rights of persons with disabilities.
(ii) to promote positive perceptions and greater social awareness towards persons with disabilities.
(iii) to promote recognition of the skills, merits and abilities of persons with disabilities, and of their contributions to workplace and the labour market.
5. Encouraging all organs of the mass media to portray persons with disabilities in a manner consistent with the purpose of the present Convention.
6. Promoting awareness-training programmes regarding persons with disabilities and the rights of persons with disabilities.
Most extended families have a disabled member and many non-disabled people take responsibility for supporting and caring for their relatives and friends with disabilities.
In the years ahead, disability will be an even greater concern because its prevalence is on the rise
Inaccessible environments create disability by creating barriers to participation and inclusion. Some examples of the negative impact of the environment to person with disabilities:
• a deaf individual without a sign language interpreter;
• a wheelchair user in a building without an accessible bathroom or elevator;
• a blind person using a computer without screen-reading software.
Across the world, people with disabilities have poorer health outcomes, lower education achievements, less economic participation and higher rates of poverty than people without disabilities. People with disabilities experience barriers in accessing services that many of us have long taken for granted, including health, education, employment, and transport as well as information. Imagine how would you feel:
• if people started using baby-talk in a conversation with you because you didn’t hear them well the first time because of loud background music or because you didn’t speak their language ?
• if people ignored you, and talked to the friend next to you instead, because you didn’t know anything about the topic of a conversation?
• if people were nervous and avoided eye-contact when you were around them because you were wearing strange clothes or had a different hairstyle?
Persons with a disability often face these kinds of reactions. Negative attitudes towards disability can result in negative treatment of people with disabilities, for example:
• children bullying other children with disabilities in schools;
• bus drivers failing to support access needs of passengers with disabilities;
• employers discriminating against people with disabilities;
• strangers mocking people with disabilities.
While financial inclusion can help persons with disabilities get out of poverty, access to financial services such as banks remains restricted by lack of physical and virtual accessibility of these services. In some countries, persons with disabilities find that more than 1/3 of banks are not accessible.
Everyone feels lonely at some point in their lives. The novelist Thomas Wolfe called loneliness the "central and inevitable experience of every man". For some people though, loneliness is not just a passing phase but a chronic, long-term state which debilitates every part of their lives. Young people with disabilities often experience rejection and seclusion due to peers’ misconceptions, or prejudices. Feelings of loneliness and isolation may be reinforced by activities and spaces that are inaccessible to persons with disabilities. Ignorance and misinformation about disability itself may contribute to feelings of isolation from peers.
Mental health stigma can make people feel that they have little to offer other people, eroding their self-esteem and making it more difficult for them to build relationships. People with learning disabilities can also be especially vulnerable.
Greater awareness and understanding of disability is fundamental to improving the lived experience of young people with disabilities worldwide.
Designing accessible infrastructure and providing equal opportunities for youth with disabilities to participate in all aspects of youth development are equally important in promoting full participation and inclusion of the communities in which they live.
Negative attitudes and behaviours have an adverse effect on children and adults with disabilities, leading to negative consequences such as low self-esteem and reduced participation. People who feel harassed because of their disability sometimes avoid going to places, changing their routines or even moving from their homes. Negative imagery and language, stereotypes, and stigma – with deep historic roots – persist for people with disabilities around the world.
Over the last few years several action plans have been drawn up at the national, state and local level as well as by various organisations. Striving to achieve disability-inclusive development is not only the right thing to do. It is also the practical thing to do: sustainable development for all can only be attained if persons with disabilities are equally included as both agents and beneficiaries as countries strive for a sustainable future.
Social inclusion is one of a multi-dimensional, relational process of increas¬ing opportunities for social participation for everyone. Inclusion is the conscious and purposeful creation of an intersectional environment in which every person is valued, connected and engaged.
People have control of their own support and making their own decisions. That means everybody gets the support they need in the way they want it. When people choose to participate, they do so without experiencing restrictions or limitations of any kind, including prejudice and discrimination.
To achieve better social inclusion and development prospects we must empower people with disabilities and global society to remove the barriers which prevent people with disabilities participating in their communities; getting a quality education, finding decent work, and having their voices heard. Knowledge and attitudes are important environmental factors, affecting all areas of service provision and social life. To achieve inclusion, we must consistently disrupt traditionally accepted constructions. This means being open and willing to challenge and change our own behaviours and views, as well as the spaces and organisations around us.
Raising awareness and challenging negative attitudes are often first steps towards creating more accessible environments for persons with disabilities.
Young people should have the opportunity to actively shape the society around them and be involved in decisions concerning them. One type of participation is democratic participation. Youth workers can support young people in making their voices heard. There are thousands of projects in Europe each year which change the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people, an innumerable number of great youth activities are developed.Taking part in different international mobilities for young people with fewer opportunities could be a great chance to try something different and to learn new skills such as international communication, social and intercultural competences, organisational skills, etc. It can be a source of new inspiration and motivation or the next step in their lives towards personal and professional development.
Participation can also be an educational approach. It would be an opportunity to involve young people (or youth workers) with a disability to take part in activities – preferably in the activities which they have an interest in. Doing mixed-ability activities mainly takes a change of thinking and working to turn your organisation into an inclusive organization.
Providing an international opportunity to young people with (and without) a disability in your organisation/country is a positive change in itself and a big step forward. Specially in an international mixed-ability project, there is a unique opportunity to live together with persons with and without a disability. The young people with a disability can interact with people without a disability in a peer-to-peer relationship and not the carer-patient relationship that often haunts them. The young people without a disability have a chance to get to know the kinds of disabilities better, but also the person behind the disability, which is even more important. Being part of an (international) group is a real life exercise in social skills: the young people learn to find their place in the group, deal with others, have to fi nd solutions for communication across cultures, etc. They can find out how to react when confronted with difference, for example, food, climate, language or different cultures within a safe environment. They can share these new experiences back home with their friends and community.
Participants of the international training course “ALL IN” TRAINING OF TRAINERS (C1) in Austria.
You can empower young people to take an active role in the projects you organise with them. Through involvement, each individual can gain skills and knowledge to set up future projects themselves. For the organisations and youth workers involved it can be interesting to ‘look over the hedge’ and get new ideas, inspiration and motivation from working with organisations abroad. Youth and disability organisations in other countries do things differently, with largely the same aim of making life better for young people with disabilities. The activities and approaches taken at a project can enrich the activities back home.
To fully achieve empowerment women and girls with disabilities, efforts should focus on:
• Develop policies and programmes focused on women and girls with disabilities aiming at their full and equal participation in society.
• Support the empowerment of women and girls with disabilities by investing in their education and supporting their transition from school to work.
• Raise awareness on the needs of women and girls with disabilities and eliminate stigma and discrimination against them.
To address labour market imperfections and encourage the employment of people with disabilities, many countries have laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability. Enforcing antidiscrimination laws is expected to improve access to the formal economy and have wider social benefits. Many countries also have specific measures, for example quotas, aiming to increase employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Vocational rehabilitation and employment services – job training, counselling, job search assistance, and placement – can develop or restore the capabilities of people with disabilities to compete in the labour market and facilitate their inclusion in the labour market.
The environment may be changed to improve health conditions, prevent impairments, and improve outcomes for persons with disabilities. Such changes can be brought about by legislation, policy changes, capacity building, or technological developments leading to, for instance:
1. accessible design of the built environment and transport;
2. signage to benefit people with sensory impairments;
3. more accessible health, rehabilitation, education, and support services;
4. more opportunities for work and employment for persons with disabilities.
Across the world, people with disabilities are entrepreneurs and selfemployed workers, farmers and factory workers, doctors and teachers, shop assistants and bus drivers, artists, and computer technicians. Almost all jobs can be performed by someone with a disability, and given the right environment, most people with disabilities can be productive. But as documented by several studies, both in developed and developing countries, working age persons with disabilities experience significantly lower employment rates and much higher unemployment rates than persons without disabilities.
Social inclusion remains an important element of well-being for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Social inclusion is an important goal for persons with disabilities, families, service providers, and policymakers; however, the concept of social inclusion remains unclear, largely due to multiple and conflicting definitions in research and policy. Many countries need to speed up the social inclusion of persons with disabilities and improve the provision of individualised support services. Institutions and organizations also need to change – in addition to individuals and environments – to avoid excluding people with disabilities.
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Publication author: Sintija Bernava
Chairwoman of the Board of Non Governmental Organisation "Donum Animus" (Latvia)
"Donum Animus" is the only Non Governmental Organisation from Latvia holding Special Consultative Status of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations
Please find full article with photos at EUNetwork.lv
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