Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
injuries in homes and neighbourhoods that are related to poor living
conditions and accidents among working children (McEwan and
Butler, 2007). Many disabled children are denied access to education,
due largely to the fact that education systems in the global South lack
the resources and skills to meet adequately the needs of disabled stu-
dents. This in turn leads to high levels of illiteracy, reduced skills and
employment opportunities for disabled people in adulthood (Yeo and
Moore, 2003). Disabled women and girls often experience multiple
disadvantages, on the basis of their gender and disability, and are
particularly vulnerable to abuse, chronic poverty and exclusion
(United Nations, 2011a).
Poverty and disability are, therefore, mutually reinforcing concepts
and contribute to increased vulnerability and exclusion (Department
for International Development, 2000a). In recent years, development
agencies have increasingly acknowledged that poverty alleviation strat-
egies are unlikely to succeed unless disabled people's rights and needs
are taken into account. Improving health systems, infrastructure, and
the prevention and treatment of diseases is critically important in the
global South. Improving people's health and well-being, however, also
requires efforts to tackle poverty and the sociocultural, political and
economic inequalities that people with chronic illnesses and impair-
ments experience.
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Disability Politics and Rights Discourses
Acknowledgement of the links between poverty, ill health and disability
within development policy and practice has been accompanied by grow-
ing recognition of the 'right to health' as a key socio-economic human
right (Evans, 2002) and of disabled people's rights to non-discrimination
and full participation in society (McEwan and Butler, 2007). Since the
1970s, disability activists in the global North have rejected medical,
rehabilitative models of disability, arguing that these are based on
assumptions that disabled people suffer primarily from physical and/or
mental abnormalities that medicine can, and should treat, cure, or at
least prevent (Oliver, 1990; Morris, 1991). Within the dominant 'medi-
cal model' approach, disability is perceived as an 'individual misfortune'
or 'tragedy'. The disability movement in the global North (led by mainly
UK-based activists and allies) instead developed a 'social model' of
