2009 International Day of Persons with Disabilities
Every year on 3 December, the observance of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities aims to promote an understanding of disability issues, the right of persons with disabilities, and gains to be derived from the integration of persons with disabilities in every aspect of the political, social, economic and cultural life of their communities.
The Day provides an opportunity to mobilise action to achieve the goal of full and equal enjoyment of human rights and participation in society by persons with disabilities, established by the World Programme of Action concerning Disabled Persons, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1982.
Globally, almost one in ten people is a person living with a disability and recent studies indicate that persons with disabilities constitute up to 20 per cent of the population living in poverty in developing countries.
The United Nations has declared the theme for the 2009 International Day, “Making the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Inclusive: Empowerment of persons with disabilities and their communities around the world”. The MDGs are development goals set by the United Nations in 2000 that aim to halve world poverty by 2015.
Consider the statistics:
According to the World Health Organization, approximately 10 per cent of the world’s population lives with a disability – the world’s largest minority. This number is increasing because of population growth, medical advances and the ageing process.
According to the World Bank, it is estimated that 20 per cent of the world’s poorest people have a disability and tend to be regarded in their own communities as the most disadvantaged.
More than 20 per cent of Australians experience some form of disability. That is one in five people.
Almost 1.2 million people in New South Wales have a disability.
Australian Human Rights Disability Discrimination Commissioner, Graeme Innes, said that many everyday activities, which most people would take for granted, present barriers to people with disability. For example:
• For some of us, trains and buses are crowded, or don’t run frequently enough. But people with physical disabilities are only able to board around 25 to 30 per cent of them to begin with.
• As the Christmas and holiday season kicks in, some of us will become frustrated as movie sessions fill with films that are really only suitable for kids and teenagers. But for people who are deaf, or have a hearing impairment, captioned movies are only shown on 24 of the 3000 screens in cinemas in Australia, and then, only twice a week.
• For some of us, consulting our local GP can be an unpleasant experience. But for people with physical disabilities, only 40 per cent of GP surgeries have adjustable height examination couches, so many are either examined on the floor or not examined at all.
• For most of us, checking information on the internet is a task we complete dozens of times a day. But for people who are blind or have low vision, many websites – including some government websites – are either not accessible at all, or not as accessible as they could be.
• In our broader community, the unemployment rate is currently running at 5.8 per cent. For people with mental illness, for example, it is around 19.5 per cent.
• For some of us, it can be a little inconvenient to get to our suburban accountant or solicitor if their office is up a flight of stairs above local shops. But, for people with mobility disability, this means that they cannot get there at all.
There is a real likelihood that many of us, and the people we care about, will develop a disability as we grow older (whether it be a mobility, hearing, sight or psychiatric disability). The issues that face people with disability on an everyday basis, and threaten their level of social inclusion, should have a much higher public profile than they currently have.
Aboriginal Disability Network Chair, Lester Bostock said, “Many Aboriginal people with disability live in situations of poverty equivalent to people living in poverty in developing countries. The incidence of ‘disability’ is estimated to be at least twice as prevalent in Aboriginal communities as non-Aboriginal communities, yet Aboriginal people with disability are rarely included in the many strategies designed to address the poverty experienced by Aboriginal people.”
To find out more information, please click on the following links: Don’t DIS my ABILITY, UN International Day of People with Disability.