Human Rights Based Approach to Disability in Development in Uganda: A Way to Fill the Gap between Political and Social Spaces?

Abstract

Human rights have become one of the key concepts both in theory and practice of disability studies. The trend is applicable also to the discourse of disability in development: disability in “developing countries”. This paper investigates both the theory and practice of human rights based approach to disability in development. The case study is on Uganda, which has succeeded in creating political space for persons with disabilities while their social space has not been developed as much. Both interviews and literature reviews illustrate the argument. On the basis of the findings from the Ugandan case, we analyse the gap between political and social spaces from the perspective of the human rights based approach, and summarize the significances of the approach to disability in development, and also the challenges in its operationalisation.

Keywords:

• Human rights based approach
• political space
• social space
• development
• Uganda

Acknowledgements

First of all, we would like to thank our research participants for sharing their experiences with us. Without them, this article would have been impossible. Earlier version of this article was presented in the Human Rights-Based Approach to Development Seminar of the Institute for Human Rights in August 2007 at Turku, Finland and Nordic Africa Days in October 2007 at Uppsala, Sweden. We would like to thank the participants for their insightful comments. The study is funded by the Academy of Finland, while Katsui's fieldwork was funded by the Tokyo Foundation (JIPAward). We are grateful for all of the above supports. However, the views expressed in this article are ours, as is the responsibility for the content.