Can we agree in this country on a floor of human dignity below which we will not allow any human being to fall? No child, woman or man in this land will sleep hungry. No person shall be forced to sleep under the open sky. No parent shall send their child out to work instead of to school. And no one shall die because they cannot afford the cost of...
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Creating enabling environments by Kalpana Kannabiran
The denial of equality, dignity and autonomy to persons with disabilities lies at the core of disability rights. “Disability need not be an obstacle to success … It is my hope that … this century will mark a turning point for inclusion of people with disabilities in the lives of their societies.” — Professor Stephen Hawking, “Foreword,” World Report on Disability. The inauguration of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of...
More »Disability must be seen as a development issue, says report by Claire Provost
The first global report on disability reveals how the exclusion of 1 billion people – invisible in official statistics and absent from aid budgets – is holding back development progress The UN millennium development goals (MDGs) may not be met by 2015 unless urgent action is taken to address the needs of people with disabilities, according to the first world report on disability. More than 1 billion people live with a disability,...
More »Making sanitation as popular as cricket by Darryl D'Monte
700 million Indians have cell phones, but 638 million still don’t have access to proper sanitation. At this year’s South Asian Conference on Sanitation, social solutions to the problem were discussed, including “naming and shaming” and the CLTS programme which gets villagers to map the open areas where they defecate There can hardly be a bigger taboo than sanitation when it comes to the government, bureaucracy or even the people...
More »“Why two different Bills on mental health?” by Aarti Dhar
Disability Rights Groups are up in arms against the divergent stands being taken by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment on the rights of persons with disabilities. As per the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), ratified by India, all human beings are presumed to have legal capacities. However, while the new Persons with Disabilities Act, 2011...
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