From The Jerusalem Post: Disabled Arabs suffer extreme difficulties. Most notably, the women, of course:
Arab males with disabilities face extreme difficulties, the study reported, but women with disabilities are socially isolated, unable to marry and, in many cases, confined to the home by their own sense of shame, social pressure and the family's reluctance to be seen with them in public.
"Some of the women with disabilities are illiterate, which limits their access to information and increases their dependence on relatives.
Among Beduin women in the Negev who have disabilities, the situation is even bleaker," said the report.
"The situation with disabled women in the Arab sector disturbed me every time it came up," Avital Sandler-Loeff, who authored the report along with Yiffat Shahak, told The Jerusalem Post in an interview. "Women with disabilities are forced to stay at home and are really not involved at all in the community," she said.
A little less balanced report (italics mine): Arab children more likely to be disabled
"Inhuman treatment" of the disabled in rural India:
The proportion of children in Israel's Arab community who are blind, deaf or have physical or developmental disabilities is double that of the Jewish population, according to the first report on disabilities in the Arab population in Israel. The report is being released today by the Joint Distribution Committee-Israel in honor of International Day for Persons with Disabilities today. The authors attribute the high incidence of disability to the high rate of inbreeding, genetic diseases, childbearing at an advanced age and a high incidence of accidents.
Girdher says, cases of physical abuse of the disabled are rampant in rural area citing cases where a visually challenged girl was raped in Dahod and another woman with visual impairment in the same district was rejected by her physically challenged fiance.
Also, chaining physically challenged people is common in Unjha and Makhtupur, says Girdher adding that in some other areas like Chandroda, polio patients are called “mastans” and revered by family with the belief that the person has absorbed all the ill fate of the family through his disability. “During our study, we have also come across a number of mentally challenged people who have been abandoned by families near Piradata Mazar in Mehsana district.” These are made to take mud baths by the people of the mazaar, he says. “After a thorough situation assessment in districts of Gandhinagar, Anand, Banaskantha, Sabarkantha, Mehsana, Anand, Baroda, Katch and Surendranagar, we realised that while on one hand there is very low level of awareness regarding issues pertaining to disability among both the civil society and the health workers, on the other hand, stigma attached to disability is proving a great hindrance in their rehabilitation. For many, disability is only orthopaedic. They are not aware of other forms,” he says.
Angola's Social Welfare minister pledges to help disabled folks reach fuller partnership in society. This could be a news report from the U.S. or anywhere, but it's not easy to find Angolan news on the disabled. Also, Malta.
E-Accessibility is the theme for IDDP 2006 but here in Malaysia, if the disabled simply have basic accessibility, they will be genuinely delighted and the nation will be one step closer to eventually being a developed country.A Kuwaiti report on governmental observance of the day reveals typical tensions between focus on charity and a more evolved understanding of what disabled people need from their communities.
In a poignant report on war-caused brutalities and disability in Sierra Leone, a Reuters report shows the connection between violence and disenfranchisement from society:
When Bambay Sawaneh came face to face with the man who had ordered rebel fighters to cut off both his forearms three years earlier, he asked a baying crowd not to lynch his attacker.The Christian magazine Inspire talks about some success in changing attitudes in the Middle East and North Africa.
"I told the people if they kill him it will not make my hands come back," said Sawaneh, who recognised the man during a physiotherapy session to help him use prosthetic limbs in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown.
In what became a trade-mark mutilation during the country's 1991-2002 war, the rebels first tried to cut off the then 15-year-old Sawaneh's arms with an axe. But the blade was too blunt to cut through the flesh and bone, so they resorted to using cutlasses -- local parlance for machetes.
"I have forgiven him," Sawaneh, now 22, said of the man he once swore to kill, wiping sweat from his brow with his left stump after a bible class in the steamy coastal city.
Thousands like Sawaneh have learned to come to terms with the horrific acts inflicted on them and their families by the notorious Revolutionary United Front rebels, who financed their campaign of murder, rape and mutilation partly by the trade in gems that inspired Blood Diamond, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
In Goa, India, an article on how attitudes yet need to change.
The Palestine News Network reports on the toll the ongoing struggle with the state of Israel puts on people living in the Gaza Strip:
And one is hard pressed to find a Palestinian man without a limp, or a bullet or shrapnel lodged somewhere in his body, or an arm that was broken and pushed back into the socket without medical care. And then there are the generation whose bodies were stiffened and twisted in their formative years. Although functional, there are those who after spending their “seventeenth year in a cupboard” in Israeli prison as an Aida Refugee Camp man did, do not move properly and are in constant discomfort.
The Rehabilitation Sector of the Union of NGOs issued its annual statement on Saturday. “The disabled Palestinians affected by such circumstances is the largest of all other sectors. More than 6,000 of the Palestinians injured during this Intifada are suffering from a disability.”
Lest we think the disability divide is mainly in developing countries, Canada's Toronto Star reports on "frightening gaps" in the quest to make disabled people more equal in society:
An excellent report from Jakarta, Indonesia, discusses the link between disability and poverty:This week, the Ontario Association of Food Banks reported that people with disabilities, who represent 12.4 per cent of Canada's population, make up more than 20 per cent of those who need their services.
Not surprising perhaps when you consider that the employment rate for people with disabilities is about half that of their non-disabled peers, another frightening gap.
In Beirut, Lebanon, planned celebrations were cancelled because of the "volatile situation there," but discussion of the social vs. the medical model of disability was nevertheless discussed, as well as the war's impact on disability:The World Bank estimates that 10-12 percent of the world's population, or over 600 million people, have some form of disability. Some 80 percent of them are living in poor countries (WHO, 2006).
People with disabilities are highly over-represented among the poor; about 82 percent of them live below the poverty line. They have varying access to networks and resources and economic power. Their disabilities don't only affect them, but also their families, social networks and their general environment.
Poverty is considered both a cause and a consequence of disability. Poverty is a cause of disability because the poor often lack resources to prevent malnutrition, and access to adequate health services that may prevent disabilities. Poverty is a consequence of disability since people with disabilities often lack access to education, health services and income generating activities and are often deprived of social and economic rights. It is estimated that only 2 percent of people with disabilities enjoy adequate access to basic needs. These factors contribute to high levels of vulnerability and social exclusion, and preserve the vicious circle between disability, vulnerability and poverty.
Disabled folks participated in a Lebanese marathon Sunday and said it was an example of social equality that they were part of the event.The World Health Organization asserts that 10 percent of Lebanese are disabled. Additionally, 83 percent of all disabled are unemployed - almost five times more than the able-bodied rate. Six hundred were disabled in this past summer's war, and since the cessation of hostilities cluster bombs have disabled a further 150 civilians and continue to mutilate the limbs of more.
"Is it too much to ask to go to school, work and live a dignified life?" Laqqis asks. "I know that there are too many problems to worry about in the government but we shouldn't always be pushed to the end."
In Cyprus, disabled people staged a protest to demand their rights:
The Cyprus Paraplegic Organisation yesterday held a demonstration outside the House of Representatives in protest against what they say is the failure of the state to recognise their rights and needs.As for the United States, I couldn't find any actual formal celebrations or reports about this being a UN-declared day for disabled persons. Just a governmental press release sent out in advance.
“Instead of celebrating International Day of Disabled Persons on December 3, we have decided this year to go ahead with this symbolic demonstration to express our displeasure at the way people with heavy disabilities are treated by the government and the Parliament,” read an announcement issued by the Organisation.
According to the announcement, Parliament had rejected all of the organisation’s suggestions during the recent alteration of the Law for Public Benefits and Services, while the government has repeatedly ignored disabled people’s problems.
0 comments:
Post a Comment