Disability Rights Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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The Oxford English Dictionary defines a disabled person as someone whose “physical or mental condition” limits the person’s “activity, movement, sensation, etc.” Relative to labels such as crippled and handicapped, disabled is considered to be less derogatory, and it is now the preferred way of identifying individuals who have restrictive conditions.

However, underlying this change in labeling is a more profound shift in social attitudes toward the disabled. Historically, in both Western and non-Western societies, the disabled were typically seen as dysfunctional human beings who should either be treated as despicable outcasts or as helpless victims of fate. Consequently, contempt and pity were the two most commonly expressed social attitudes toward the disabled, rendering them isolated and marginalized.

Against this background, the United Nations (UN) first identified the plight of the disabled as a human rights cause that warranted global attention with the Declaration of the Rights of the Disabled in 1975. Just over 30 years later, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was adopted in 2006. Hailed as a major landmark in international law, this convention obliges signatory states to ensure that the disabled have the full range of human rights afforded to able-bodied persons and to remove any discriminatory practices, both official and customary, against the disabled.

However, the momentous shift that set the normative groundwork for the current rights-based approach to disability was the adoption of “The World Programme of Action Concerning Disabled Persons” in 1982, which considered disability a social rather than a biomedical condition. Building on the definition of handicap used by the World Health Organization, which emphasizes the term’s contextual dimension, the UN identified a handicap, in General Assembly Resolution 37/52, as first and foremost “a function of the relationship between disabled persons and their environment.” Consequently, a handicap is not the equivalent of a permanent physiological condition. Rather, a handicap occurs when there is a breakdown in what should have been an interactive relationship.

By far the most common and concrete form of this breakdown is when the disabled “encounter cultural, physical, or social barriers which prevent their access to the various systems of society that are available to other citizens.” A handicap as such represents a “loss or limitation of opportunities” for the disabled “to take part in the life of the community on an equal level with others.” This characterization of disability as a sociopolitical issue meant that the disability movement became fundamentally about the restoration of social justice to a group of individuals who share the experience of oppression and marginalization. The movement has evolved to such a point that some of its advocates are starting to use disability as the basis for positive identity. Accordingly, for the first time in the history of the movement, the rights of the disabled are defended on cultural grounds, based on the claim that the disabled constitute a minority whose identity is forged by a shared history and culture of living the life of the disabled.

Cultural and otherwise, disability rights are generally claim rights that necessarily entail legal obligations to provide for the claimants. Disability rights have therefore opened all kinds of doors for the disabled in the last two decades. Taken literally, this means that wheelchair ramps that facilitate accessibility of physical space are fast becoming the global standard. Less visible and more controversial are measures that oblige employers to modify work conditions for the disabled, making workplace accommodations that go beyond physical accessibility.

It is these kinds of accommodations that perhaps pose the most challenge to the advancement of disability rights. According to the UN, chronic unemployment among the disabled is a global problem. It is estimated that in developing countries, about 80 percent to 90 percent of the disabled, who are otherwise of working age, are unemployed; in developed countries, the figure is between 50 percent and 70 percent. These are significant numbers given that by UN’s count, there are about 650 million disabled persons in the world. They, therefore, constitute about 10 percent of the world’s population, making them the largest minority group, 80 percent of which live in the developing world. These figures suggest that the disabled are far from being full participating members of society. Among other things, their right to work, which is guaranteed by both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights, is being consistently violated.

The disabled, therefore, stand a much higher chance than the general population of being caught in the vicious cycle of unemployment, poverty, and dependency. Against this reality, it is unclear how the living condition of the disabled can be improved by the growing grassroots movement to represent the rights of the disabled as the cultural rights of a minority. This political trend is arguably the result of the move to demedicalize disability. Yet by emphasizing the unique identity of the disabled, the advocates of this position may run the risk of ghettoizing the disabled even more.

Bibliography:

Brown, Steve E. “What Is Disability Culture?” Disability Studies Quarterly 22 (2002): 34–50.
Devlin, Richard, and Diane Pothier, eds. Critical Disability Theory: Essays in Philosophy, Politics, Policy, and Law. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2006.
Linton, Simi. Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity. New York: New York University Press, 1998.
Lynk, Michael. “Disability and the Duty to Accommodate: An Arbitrator’s Perspective.” In Labour Arbitration Yearbook 2001–2002, vol. 1, 51–122. Toronto, ON: Lancaster House, 2002.
McKenna, Ian B. “Legal Rights for Persons with Disabilities in Canada: Can the Impasse Be Resolved? Ottawa Law Review 29 (1997–1998): 153–224.
United Nations. General Assembly Resolution 37/52, 3 December 1982. www.un.org/esa/socdev/enable/diswpa00.htm.
United Nations Secretariat for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Factsheet on Disability. www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?navid=35&pid=18.
Factsheet on Employment. www.un.org/disabilities/default. asp?id=255.