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The Peacebuilding Initiative is an evolving project, which benefits from the knowledge and experience of its users. We welcome you to submit a resource or document to the research team by emailing: pbi@hpcr.org.
Empowerment: Persons with Disabilities
Last Updated: February 19, 2009
Persons with disabilities have been approached as a group specifically at risk in emergency and post-conflict situations. This section first presents the definitions and conceptual issues around terminology used by stakeholders working on issues pertaining to persons with disabilities; different ways practitioners conceive of persons with disabilities' situations; and the strategies used by stakeholders to address them, such as discrimination, empowerment (also called self-fulfillment), inclusion (or reasonable accommodation), independence, mainstreaming, protection, and vulnerability.
After a framing of the terms and concepts this section outlines how efforts to mainstream issues for people with disabilities have evolved in the last decade or so, particularly in the fields of development, human rights and humanitarian emergencies. Though initially specific to conflict situations, this evolution is progressively penetrating the peacebuilding agenda. After examining how this evolution has occurred, this section addresses the impact of conflict on persons with disabilities. Conflict situations increase the marginalization of persons who already have a disability and raise the number of newly disabled persons. Persons with disabilities are considered as being among the most affected, discriminated against, and at further risk of abuse. However, this section argues that persons with disabilities must also be viewed as engaged actors and potential full partners in peacebuilding processes.
A number of international, national and local actors, intergovernmental, governmental and nongovernmental, are engaged in work with persons with disabilities. The following section, albeit not comprehensive, mentions the different initiatives and types of programs under way, as well as the most engaged stakeholders on the topic.
Finally, the writing presents a short summary of some of the key debates and implementation challenges discussed by academics, practitioners and policymakers in relation to the process of fully including persons with disabilities in peacebuilding processes. In brief, these challenges highlight: the diversity of disabilities; the importance of a holistic approach; the importance of a community-based approach; the importance of active participation in the different stages of peacebuilding programs; the practical constraints of approaches centered on this group. These elements and other dimensions of the concrete implementation of the persons with disabilities agenda are detailed in the key documents and the wide range of guidelines presented at the end of this section.
