The global COVID-19 Disability Rights Monitor: implementation, findings, disability studies response

Abstract

The global COVID-19 Disability Rights Monitor (COVID-19 DRM) has revealed major injustices suffered by disabled people around the world during the first stage of the pandemic, including enhanced institutionalisation, breakdown of essential services in the community, multiplication of intersectional harms, and denial of access to healthcare. In this paper, we present an overview of the COVID-19 DRM and its findings. We also offer a disability studies response by making recourse to the social model of disability, independent living philosophy, and analyses of biopolitics. We argue that the COVID-19 DRM illuminates systemic flaws that predate the pandemic, and that it is these flaws that need to be addressed in post-pandemic efforts at reconstruction.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• disability rights
• social model of disability
• independent living
• deinstitutionalisation
• biopolitics
• thanatopolitics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.