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The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its implications for the health and wellbeing of indigenous peoples with disabilities: A comparison across Australia, Mexico and New Zealand

RIVAS VELARDE, Minerva C
O'BRIEN, Patricia
PARMENTER, Trevor R
2018

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This paper explores how the expressed health needs of Indigenous peoples with disabilities resonate with the mandate of Article 25 ‘Health’ of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The perceptions of indigenous peoples with disabilities are investigated, regarding their access to, and expectations of, health care. Their views are compared to those of health workers, senior bureaucrats and United Nations delegates. An exploratory case study approach was taken to compare three jurisdictions: Australia, Mexico and New Zealand. The data collection techniques used involved semi-structured interviews, focus groups and field notes. The findings suggest that the health needs of indigenous peoples with disabilities are largely underserved and misunderstood by health departments. Specialised and preventive health care for those with disabilities was found to be particularly problematic. Poverty, discrimination and disenfranchisement emerged as being the possible major determinants of the ill health experienced by indigenous peoples with disabilities. The findings and conclusions outlined in this paper advocate the need to build capacity and rights literacy for indigenous peoples with disabilities, particularly with respect to the CRPD, in order to enhance its impact on the health of indigenous people. A legitimate redistribution of resources and decision-making in response to the expressed health needs of indigenous peoples with disabilities is needed if the vision of the CPRD is to be realised in relation to Article 25. 

 

Disability and the Global South, 2018, Vol.5, No. 2

Disability, poverty and education: perceived barriers and (dis)connections in rural Guatemala

GRECH, Shaun
2014

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This paper engages with the impacts of disability on the formal education of disabled people in poor rural areas. Reporting on qualitative ethnographic work in Guatemala, adults with a physical impairment provided retrospective accounts of their educational trajectories. Findings highlight multidimensional and dynamic barriers to education confronted by all poor people, but which often intensified for disabled people. These met a host of disability-specific barriers cutting across social, physical, economic, political and personal spheres. Findings report how in the face of more persistent basic needs and costs, education had a high opportunity cost, and often could not be sustained. Disabled parents also came to prioritise the education of their children translating into limited or no school re-entry for these parents. The paper concludes that engagement with temporal and context specific (but fluid) spaces of poverty is necessary, because it is within these spaces that disability and education are constructed and lived, and within and through which barriers emerge. Cross-sectoral efforts are needed, addressing educational barriers for all poor people indiscriminately, while targeting families to remove obstacles to other basic needs competing with education. Critically, efforts are needed to ensure that educational outcomes are linked to immediate contributions to the family economy and welfare through work.

 

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

Global health watch 2005-2006 : an alternative world health report

LEMA, Claudia
et al
2005

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This report is the result of a collaboration of leading popular movements, NGOs, activists, academics and health workers. It provides an evidence-based analysis of the political economy of health and health care and challenges policies and initiatives of global organisations including the World Bank, the World Health Organization and UNICEF. Many key issues relevant to health are covered, including health care services and systems, health of vulnerable groups, climate change, food and water, education, armed conflicts. Part E also provides and assessment of the impact global institutions, transnational corporations and rich countries. This report is a call for action, directed to health workers and activists and national and international policy-makers

Ancient roots, new shoots : endogenous development in practice

HAVERKORT, Bertus
VAN T' HOOFT, Katrien
HIEMSTRA, Wim
Eds
2003

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This book describes the approach of COMPAS, a network of partners that supports 'development from within', based on local knowledge and practices. The body of the book consists of case studies which illustrate how development can be based on locally available resources, knowledge, values and leadership institutions; how there can be genuinely local determination of development options; and how the benefits of development within local areas and communities can be fostered

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