Helping the disabled break out of cycle of poverty

http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp?fileid=20061202.E02&irec=1

December 03, 2006

Khairul Anam, Jakarta

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.

Poverty is the greatest human rights scourge of our time. Human rights violations are both a cause and consequence of poverty. Human rights are increasingly accepted as part of the definition of what it is to be poor, as well as offering a solution to poverty. In other words, human rights serve both as a constitutional and instrumental function insofar as poverty and poverty reduction are concerned.

There are many ways in which human rights entitlements are being "claimed" in practice, through social mobilization, public interest litigation, political action and legal empowerment strategies focused on enlivening administrative action.

The human rights framework obliges the states to protect their populations against situations of poverty and social exclusion, including by ensuring an enabling environment that protects human rights standards. One good example of human rights enforcement is the public accessibility law. It enables people with disabilities to use and access public services like other normal people. Accessibility will help people with disabilities maintain their self-reliance and self-dignity. Consequently, people with disabilities deserve access to job or employment. Such an adequate livelihood activities in turn can break the vicious cycle of poverty among the disabled.

The international community has universally accepted a principle that all individuals, not excluding people with disabilities, should enjoy a basic level of social economic rights. Most societies today recognize the rights to adequate housing, basic education, social security, health care and nourishment, employment in general workplace, and adequate conditions of work. Those rights are stipulated in both international conventions and national laws, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN Standard Rules on Equalization of Opportunities for Person with Disabilities, the Millennium Development Goals, as well as Law No. 20/1999 on Human Rights and Law No. 4/1997 on Disability.

There are some strategies to apply human rights in poverty reduction program. First, social mobilization, judicial review and political action can together vindicate rights, with potentially life-saving impacts. The realization of economic and social rights is in some respects an inherently a political undertaking, involving negotiation, disagreement, trade-offs, and compromise. Equal opportunity requires that the most disadvantaged, people with disabilities, be empowered to participate meaningfully in all spheres of life, including in political, public policy and legal processes.

Second, there is no basis for artificial distinction between the validity and justifiability of human rights of different kinds -- civil, social, economic, political and cultural. Both theory and practice bear out that rights of all kinds have justifiable elements, and "freedoms" as well as "entitlements".

Third, implementation of court orders in human rights cases often proves a challenge, but such a challenge only underscore the importance of seeing litigation strategies as part of a broad social change. In this, we see how all human rights are indivisible and interrelated. Economic, social and cultural rights claims cannot be vindicated in the absence of minimum civil and political rights guarantees: freedom to organize, access to information on the entitlements in question, access to the judicial system. And the same applies vice versa.

Fourth, a human rights framework of analysis can help disclose underlying agendas and policy preferences that perpetuate social exclusion and poverty among people with disabilities, including those linked to unqualified faith in the market. The real issue, of course, is not regulation or public action in and of itself: but rather, what is being regulated, and in the interest of whom: the market, national or international elites, the aggregate interest of the majority, or the disadvantaged and the vulnerable. Poverty and exclusion is too readily accepted by the majority as regrettably accidental, cultural or inevitable, or perhaps even the fault of the poor, rather than the outcome of conscious policy choices. All competing interests must be brought to the surface if efforts are genuinely to serve the goal of poverty reduction. Human rights laws and institutions can serve a valuable function in mediating and channeling the conflicting interests and claims that inevitably arise as development policies and programs are negotiated and implemented.

Fifth, the human rights framework compels us to look at the millennium development goals within a broader, integrated system of human rights entitlements and obligations.

The World Development Report 2006 and the Human Development Report 2005 call for issues of discrimination, inequality, and distribution to be brought to the front and center of poverty reduction strategies. Empowering people to claim their rights against duty-bearers at the national and international levels is surely the most principled, logical, and sustainable means through which the MDGs might still be realized.

We need to be sensitive to the special needs of people with disabilities.

The writer is a livelihood officer of Handicap International's Indonesia office. This article was written to mark the International Day of the Disabled.