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There are three key revelations from literature on disability and armed conflict in the Global South. First, though disability is a relative term, models from the Global North are widely used irrespective of indigenous knowledges and contexts. Second, though disability is caused by colonial and post-colonial inequalities such as poverty, disabled people are often forgotten in poverty reduction programmes. Third, while many countries experience armed conflict, little is known about its effects on disabled people living in contexts of armed conflict. This realisation led to the aims of this study which were to: i) investigate how disability is understood in the armed conflict setting of Uganda; ii) to understand the experiences of disabled people in armed conflict settings; and iii) examine ways of improving the experience of disabled people in the Global South. Using a critical, constructivist and grounded research methodology, the study revealed the nature of ‘African disabilities’ and the challenges faced by disabled people living in conflict settings: displacement, dehumanisation, rampant poverty and neo-colonialism. Disabled people experience rejection in their communities and invisibility in the provision of services. Using literature as a dialogue partner, this study concludes that the ways in which disabled people are treated runs counter to many African beliefs on what it means to be human and live in a community. Consequently, it proposes a theory which contains critical knowledge on how the Africanisation of disability could be thought of and brought about in conflict settings.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2016, Vol. 3 No. 1

This paper addresses the challenge of how to get disability on the development agenda in four African countries. We explored perceptions of what initiatives would most help in achieving disability inclusion in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), and identified factors that can either promote or hinder these initiatives. Stakeholders from Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs), other civil society organisations (CSOs), development agencies, researchers and government ministries, participated in the Nominal Group Technique and Force Field Analysis procedures across Malawi, Ethiopia, Uganda and Sierra Leone. While each country had specific contextual factors, common ideas for promoting greater disability inclusion in PRSPs focused on policy action, the need for a stronger evidence-base, mechanisms for directly influencing the PRSP process, as well as strengthening central government and DPOs’ capacity in this regard. Common facilitators for these actions were seen as the existence of a national disability umbrella body, disability-specific legislation, named Ministries for Disability, ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), and the fact that disability was already mentioned (albeit inadequately) in some PRSPs. Common inhibitors included negative attitudes towards disability, poor capacity in DPOs and government ministries, poor policy implementation, little ‘domestication’ of the UNCRPD, little political will or consultation with people with disabilities, as well as aggregating disability with other vulnerable groups, a lack of research in the area and poor coordination between DPOs.

Disability and the Global South (DGS), 2014, Vol. 1 No. 1