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The disability employment policy systems in the US and Uganda are compared, and areas identified to improve implementation by examining the broader socio-cultural contexts that have shaped disability policy and practices of the two countries over time. Using the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) as the overarching analytical framework, the analysis is framed within the discussion of the right to employment, as both countries are recognized for policy advances in this domain, but continue to experience low labor market participation for persons with disabilities. It identifies three critical areas that impact the realisation of disability rights in each context: ideological frameworks; hiring and retention initiatives; and state level supports. Ultimately, it considers the limitations of the rights based framework for actualising employment rights in the context of limited state and individual resources. 

Disability and the Global South, 2019, Vol.6, No. 2

The purpose of this paper is to explore ex-combatants’ understandings of disability and the pathways for social reintegration available to them in Colombia. The qualitative data for the study include seven in-depth interviews with ex-combatants and 29 with key informants, including disabled people’s organisations, government agencies, international organisations and academic groups. Findings suggest that transition to civilian life for ex-combatants is made more difficult by inadequate procedures, lack of support and complex administrative data vacuums. Social determinants, historical prejudice against persons with disabilities, high levels of unemployment and political polarisation in a post conflict context combine to trigger poverty traps. The findings indicate pitfalls in the early implementation of the Colombian peace process, which did not consider structural issues that affected transition to civilian life for ex-combatants with disabilities. Furthermore, key enablers for social inclusion such as peer-to-peer support have been identified by respondents. This paper concludes that more needs to be done to enhance the voices of ex-combatants with disabilities and to understand the profound meaning of acquiring impairments through participation in conflict, as well as how post-conflict responses could enable these individuals to gain the skills they need to successfully reintegrate into their communities. 

Disability and the Global South, 2019, Vol.6, No. 2

In the 1970s and 1980s, Sāmoan women organizers established Aoga Fiamalamalama and Loto Taumafai, two educational institutions, in the independent state of Sāmoa. This article examines these schools’ support of students labelled as ma’i (sick), specifically those with intellectual and physical disabilities. Through oral histories and archival research, I show the vital role performed by the women organizers in changing the educational system by drawing attention to the exclusion of disabled students. I focus on the collective labor of Sāmoan women and their influence in decolonizing schools. In this regard, the women organizers used Sāmoan concepts of fa’a Sāmoa (culture), fanua (land), and tautua (service) as ways to redefine the commitment of the education system. This is a story about daring to reimagine indigenous disabled bodies and their futures through knowledge systems, theory, and literature.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2019, Vol. 6 No. 1

Participation is a little discussed or researched concept in the social sciences, despite its importance in understanding activism. This article presents some theoretical and methodological considerations for promoting social participation and agency for disabled people through the work of psychologists associated with Brazilian public policies. This article takes the form of a discursive study, based on the dialogue between: a) Brazilian legislation on disability; b) Bader Sawaia’s Ethical-Political Psychology; and c) Disability Studies. Based on the assumption that psychological practices should promote participation and agency for disabled people, we present the elements that hinder or control participation. We then present theoretical methodological contributions to build practices that promote participation and agency, highlighting: a) critiques of moral and biomedical models of disability; b) understandings of disability from intersectional perspectives that incorporate it as a category of analysis; c) including disabled people in the construction of research and professional practices disabled people and d) the rupture with ableism, which blocks the participation of disabled people. Participation has shown to be a multidimensional concept that covers a spectrum of aspects – from the practice of activism to the constitution of subjectivity in disabled people.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2019, Vol. 6 No. 2

One common denominator of the novels and short stories by Lina Meruane (Chile, b. 1970) is the unconventional representation of illness and disability, and a critique of the connections between illness or disability, medicine and globalization. In this paper, I examine her novel Fruta podrida (2007) (rotten fruit) and the challenge it poses to the globalization of food production and pharmacological research as they affect people living in the Global South. This critique is realized obliquely and disturbingly from three distinct subject positions: a Chilean chemist who works for a fruit company in Chile; her half-sister who has diabetes; and a nurse in a New York City hospital. The linguistic and structural complexity of the narrative discourse demands an engagement with the text that places a further demand on its readers to engage with the inequalities and abuses created under globalization.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2019, Vol. 6 No. 1

Alejandro González Iñárritu is a salient example of contemporary Latin American directors who portray sick or disabled bodies as a visual and affective shorthand for different forms of violence. This article explores the relationship between his signature intersecting plots that join seemingly disconnected social spheres in a shared precariousness and his portrayal of illness, injury, and disability to suggest the violence and inequality that underpin these connections. I argue that González Iñárritu’s films frequently represent injured and disabled bodies to expose invisible connections that make social injustice possible as evidence of his using film as a political or ethical intervention that might erode the way contemporary global capitalism reproduces coloniality in everyday life. At the same time, his films illustrate the pitfalls of utilizing disabled bodies to realize this critique, thus shedding light on the ethical dimensions of this tendency to link disability with a critique of violence.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2019, Vol. 6 No. 1