International news and perspectives

Nothing without people with disabilities

Catia Malaquias, director of Starting with Julius and the Attitude Foundation - two Australian organisations seeking to change attitudes to disability through media initiatives - and a director of Down Syndrome Australia, is currently at the United Nations in Geneva, to deliver an address at the launch of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (GADIM).

The alliance 'was created to encourage actions to increase and improve representation of persons with disabilities in the media. Here you will find resources to help create more inclusive media productions' ...

The full text of Catia's speech (3 October 2016) can be read on the Starting with Julius website, here

... In my view, the positive engagement of the media in the realisation of human rights for people with disability is as critical and could be as powerful as the social implications of the right to inclusive education – as recently amplified by the Committee of the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. 

Only with the concerted, sustained and positive engagement of the media can social inclusion of people with disability and the realisation of their human rights occur in a proximate timeframe. It takes much longer to change habits than to form them – people with disabilities have been habitually excluded for centuries ...

Out of sight: the orphanages where disabled children are abandoned
Naomi Larsson, The Guardian, 26 September 2016
NGO Disability Rights International has campaigned for institutions to be closed for years but despite progress, there are still shocking instances of abuse ...

Women and girls with disabilities are equal rights holders, not ‘helpless objects of pity’ – UN rights committee
United Nations News Centre, 30 August 2016

... “Policies for women have traditionally made disability invisible, and disabilities policies have overlooked gender,” said Theresia Degener, a member of Committee member in a news release issued by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

“But,” she added, “if you are a woman or a girl with disabilities, you face discrimination and barriers because you are female, because you are disabled, and because you are female and disabled.”

To address this issue, the Committee has issued guidance for the 166 states that have ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to help them empower women and girls with disabilities and to enable them to participate in all spheres of life on an equal basis with others, as set out expressly in Article 6 of the Convention ...
Lurie Institute for Disability Policy spotlights healthcare inequities for women with intellectual disabilitiesJulian Cardillo, Brandeis Now, 30 August 2016
Why is it that nearly half of women with intellectual disabilities are not receiving the appropriate medical care they need and deserve to detect cervical cancer?
Life with a disability in Britain 'has not improved since the London Paralympics'BT, 5 September 2016
The majority of people with disability polled said there has been no change in the way others treat them.  Four out of five disabled people don’t think Britain is a better place to be disabled since the London 2012 Paralympics.

In a poll of 1,000 disabled people more than 70% said there had been no change in the way people act towards them, including the way people talk to them, language people used, and the awareness people had of their needs ...

(UK) Disability hate crime convictions surge by 40 per centJon Stone, The Independent (UK), 9 September 2016
Prosecutions for disability hate crimes surged by more than 40 per cent last year compared to the year before, official figures show ...