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'In the present report, the Special Rapporteur, Catalina Devandas-Aguilar, provides a study focusing on disability-inclusive social protection as a prerequisite for the universalization of social protection. She stresses that social protection is fundamental for achieving the social inclusion and active participation of persons with disabilities, and promoting their active citizenship. She also argues that to achieve disability-inclusive social protection, States must move away from traditional disability-welfare approaches towards embracing the innovative rights based model'

Through a series of focus group discussions conducted in northern and central Vietnam, this study gives voice to the lived economic experience of families with disabilities and how
they manage the economic challenges associated with disability. The dynamic of low and unstable income combined with on-going health care and other disability-related costs
gives rise to a range of coping mechanisms (borrowing, reducing and foregoing expenditures, drawing upon savings and substituting labour) that helps to maintain living standards
in the short-run yet threatens the longer-term welfare of both the individual with disability and their household. Current social protection programs were reported as not accessible to
all and while addressing some immediate economic costs of disability, do not successfully meet current needs nor accommodate wider barriers to availing benefits.

An understanding of rural communities is fundamental to effective community-based rehabilitation work with persons with disabilities. By removing barriers to community participation, persons with disabilities are enabled to satisfy their fundamental human needs. However, insufficient attention has been paid to the challenges that rural community disability workers (CDWs) face in trying to realise these objectives. This qualitative interpretive study, involving in-depth interviews with 16 community disability workers in Botswana, Malawi and South Africa, revealed the complex ways in which poverty, inappropriately used power and negative attitudes of service providers and communities combine to create formidable barriers to the inclusion of persons with disabilities in families and rural communities. The paper highlights the importance of understanding and working with the concept of ‘disability’ from a social justice and development perspective. It stresses that by targeting attitudes, actions and relationships, community disability workers can bring about social change in the lives of persons with disabilities and the communities in which they live.

The effect of mainstream social protection policies in Peru on the inclusion of persons with disabilities in Peruvian society are explored in the both economic and social context.  The policy analysis was conducted to understand past successes and failures and to plan for future policy implementation and the research took place alongside a similar analysis in Tanzania.  A policy research guideline was developed allowing cross-country comparison between the two studies. A literature review was carried out to identify social protection policies and programmes in Peru. In addition, 22 interviews were held with key stakeholders, including organisations of persons with disabilities, to explore more in-depth information on the impact of major policies. Social protection policies, health, education and employment issues for people with disabilities are covered. Associated qualitative and quantitative reports are available.

This report, formed of two parts, provides robust empirical basis to support the theorized disability-poverty link. The first section presents a systematic review of the literature on the relationship between disability and economic poverty. The second section explores the economic consequences of the exclusion and inclusion of people with disabilities in the areas of education, employment and health. The key pathways through which these economic costs may arise are discussed and studies that have attempted to quantify the financial impacts are reviewed

Collection of data about disability in a census or survey context is influenced by the cultural context, particularly the beliefs and practices within the communities where the data are collected. Attitudes toward individuals with disability will influence what questions are asked, how such questions are framed, and how individuals in the community will respond to these questions. This article examines how culturally defined concepts of disability influence the development of questions on the topic, as well as helps determine who asks the questions and who answers the questions. These issues in turn influence how much data are collected and how accurate the data are. It also examines how ethnic diversity and poverty contribute to these questions. Recommendations for attention to these issues are made by census and survey.

This report situates disability and inclusion within the broader context of sustainable development, with a particular focus on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The paper provides background on the historical role of the UN in promoting inclusion and outlines the current trends and challenges facing people with disabilities globally. The following section presents these challenges within the context of the SDGs, showing that disability needs to be tackled if the SDGs are to be achieved. It concludes with a number of recommendations for a disability-inclusive 2030 agenda for sustainable development

Disabled people are often among the poorest and most marginalised people in communities. Many development organisations state that their intention is to improve the lives of the most disadvantaged and yet don’t actively include disabled people in their work. Given the huge but largely unrecognised potential contribution of 1 billion disabled people towards economic and social progress, it makes good sense for development organisations to actively engage them. Disabled people have a right to participate in and benefit from development, and their inclusion will help reduce the inequalities that are slowing down progress on the elimination of extreme poverty.

This article discusses tensions in children’s rehabilitation that came to light through a series of ‘postcolonial dialogues’ amongst Canadian and Cameroonian participants. We defined ‘tensions’ as conflicts, contrasting ways of seeing things, and/or taken-forgranted ideas that shape issues related to rehabilitation for children with disabilities. These tensions were identified, articulated, and deconstructed through an iterative, multi-phase dialogue among eight individuals who identify as people with disabilities, rehabilitation providers, and/or rehabilitation researchers in Cameroon and Canada. The tensions discussed in this article problematize conceptualizations of disability and of client-centred care, the role of pain as a reinforcement tool in rehabilitation, and assumptions about poverty and religion in the context of rehabilitation practice. We present this synthesis to achieve several aims: (1) to provide multiple ways for rehabilitation providers and others to better understand these particular substantive issues; (2) to model the use of a critical lens as an approach for thinking about rehabilitation that promotes reflective and deliberate practice and that can be applied across contexts; and, (3) to promote dialogue about postcolonial and other critical perspectives on rehabilitation with children and with other groups.

Disability and the Global South (DGS), 2015, Vol. 2 No. 2