Disability, poverty and development: critical reflections on the majority world debate

Abstract

Beyond rough estimates, little is known about disability in the majority world and complexities related to context and poverty are too often unacknowledged in the quest to simplify, generalise and export disability discourse, models and strategies. Disability remains peripheral to the larger development agenda and the disability studies debate maintains an almost exclusive focus on western settings, loaded with associated historical, social and cultural assumptions. In the light of this, this paper seeks to elucidate and engage with complex issues surrounding the disability and majority world debate, critique and challenge the exportation of western focused disability models and discourse and engage with possible avenues for bridging the gap between disability and development.

Keywords:

• disability and development
• global disability
• poverty
• majority world
• developing countries

Notes

1. Major international development agencies and NGOs have published a considerable grey literature addressing disability and development (see, for example, DFID 2000; Handicap International and Christian Blind Mission 2006) and others have engaged with disability through a number of programmes. For example the World Health Organisation (WHO) focused its efforts on developing a comprehensive classification instrument [renamed the International Classification of Functioning and Health (ICF) in 2001], while the World Bank has notably been involved in data collection and knowledge sharing among others.

2. See Said’s (1978) seminal work on the Orient.

3. Ingstad (1995b) in fact noted how these images of misery and neglect were often created in the north, in order to generate sympathy and hence raise money for disabled people in developing countries. These focused almost exclusively on negatives attitudes, rather than structural causes such as poverty (which were politically controversial).

4. Miles (2003), for example, provided an extensive reference to historical literature documenting, among others, local services (formal and informal), community practices, healing methods and therapies and self‐organisation of disabled groupings in Africa.

5. CBR is defined as:

a strategy within community development for the rehabilitation, equalization of opportunities and social integration of all people with disabilities. CBR is implemented through the combined efforts of disabled people themselves, their families and communities, and the appropriate health, education, vocational and social services. (ILO/UNESCO/UNICEF/WHO 1994)

6. The IMF is an international organisation composed of 185 member countries, formed originally to facilitate the promotion of international monetary cooperation, exchange rate stability and orderly exchange arrangements, economic growth and high levels of employment, and also to provide temporary financial assistance to countries to help ease balance of payments adjustments.

7. The MDGs are eight goals signed by147 countries at the UN Millennium Summit in New York in 2000, to be achieved by 2015, with targets and indicators devised to monitor progress in their achievement. These are, respectively, eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability and develop a Global Partnership for Development (see http://www.undp.org/mdg/basics.shtml).