More than one billion people worldwide experience some form of disability, the United Nations and the World Bank said in a report that calls for the elimination of barriers that often force the people with disabilities to “the margins of society.” The World Report on Disability, developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank, with contributions from over 380 experts, urges governments to “to step up efforts to enable access to mainstream services and to invest in specialized programmes to unlock the vast potential of people with disabilities.”
The World report on disability, mandated by the World Health Assembly and jointly published by WHO and the World Bank, summarizes the best available scientific evidence on disability and makes recommendations for action in support of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006). About 80% of people with disabilities worldwide live in low-income countries. People with disabilities are often among the most socially and economically disadvantaged and their rights are denied in many countries. Despite the enormity of the problem, scientific information on disability is lacking. There is no agreement on definitions and little internationally comparable information on the incidence, distribution and trends of disability.
The World report on disability addresses the need for better research and data on disability. It will include the first update of WHO’s disability prevalence estimates for more than thirty years. The World report on disability also explores current evidence about disability, including on discrimination and barriers, identifies needs and provides an analysis of what works to improve the lives of people with disabilities in the areas of health, rehabilitation, support services, information, infrastructure, transportation, education and employment.
The WHO Director-General and a Vice President of the World Bank launched the World report on disability on 9 June 2011 at the United Nations headquarters, New York, in the presence of high-level representatives from Member States, celebrities with disabilities, together with representatives of disabled people’s organizations, professional groups and non-governmental organizations. This will be followed by a half day technical session on how to implement the recommendations of the World report on disability.
To promote the World report on disability and its messages, four short films are being launched between December 2010 and June 2011 on the theme “What’s disability to me?”, featuring women with disabilities from the United Republic of Tanzania, Lebanon, United Kingdom and the Plurinational State of Bolivia talking about their lives and the barriers they have overcome. The films will be available on the WHO YouTube channel, and via links on the WHO Facebook page and the WHO main website. Leading up to the launch, the goal is to build an online community to mobilize international interest and support for efforts to remove barriers to the participation of people with disabilities in their societies.
“Disability is part of the human condition,” said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan at a ceremony in UN headquarters to launch the report. “Almost every one of us will be permanently or temporarily disabled at some point in life.”
“We must do more to break the barriers which segregate people with disabilities, in many cases forcing them to the margins of society,” Dr. Chan said.
Etienne Krug, a WHO disability specialist, suggested that the barriers themselves are a cause of disability.
“Disability results a lot from the barriers that society erects for people with disabilities,” he said, “barriers such as stigma and discrimination; such as lack of access to health services and rehabilitation services or problems of access to transportation and buildings and information services.”
Speaking to UN Radio, Dr. Krug called for the “mainstreaming of all services. That means to make everything accessible. Children with disabilities shouldn’t go to school to a segregated school, but rather be integrated in a normal school as much as possible.
“Employment should be accessible to people with disability so that they don’t have to live in poverty or from charity. Health services should be designed so that they also respond to the needs of people with disabilities. So basically all services should be accessible to people with disabilities.”
The famed British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), told the launch via video: “We have a moral duty to remove the barriers to participation for people with disabilities, and to invest sufficient funding and expertise to unlock their vast potential. It is my hope this century will mark a turning point for inclusion of people with disabilities in the lives of their societies.”
The barriers mentioned in the report include: stigma and discrimination; a lack of adequate health care and rehabilitation services; and inaccessible transport, buildings and information and communication technologies.
“As a result, people with disabilities experience poorer health, lower educational achievements, fewer economic opportunities and higher rates of poverty than people without disabilities,” WHO said.
The report recommended that governments and their development partners provide people with disabilities access to all mainstream services, invest in specific programmes and services for those people with disabilities who are in need, and adopt a national disability strategy and plan of action.
In addition, governments “should work to increase public awareness and understanding of disability, and support further research and training in the area. Importantly, people with disabilities should be consulted and involved in the design and implementation of these efforts.”
Nearly 150 countries and regional organizations have signed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), and 100 have ratified it, committing them to removing barriers so that people with disabilities may participate fully in their societies, WHO said.
