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In poverty, disability means stigma & exclusion

The Angry Cripple

by The Angry Cripple

08 Feb 05:45am

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Filed under: Angry Cripple, Disability, Indonesia, Poverty

29 comments

Lucy Daniel is the Advocacy and Policy Officer at CBM Australia, a development organisation working with people with disabilities in the world’s poorest places.

It could be the plot of a great Hollywood movie. A political drama. With George Clooney or Matt Damon as male lead. And a young, feisty, female journalist who gets caught up in it all.

Disability is not the only battle for kids like this. © 2011 CBM Australia, Photo: Christoph Ziegenhardt.

The opening scene pans to a meeting room, high up in skyscraper land, with a marble round table, iced water jugs and leaders of a big global development Bank.

“Gentlemen, you should be proud,” says the silver fox, “This policy forges the path to education for the poorest of the poor.” Clapping and shaking hands all around.

Cut to the brilliant green and brown of a remote village high up in Indonesia’s mountains. Children, gorgeous and laughing, walk across endless kilometers of terrain to a tiny, one-teacher school.

The camera pans back to the village, where a little girl stares wistfully after them. The shot widens to show that she has clubfoot; her feet twisted inwards. As opening credits scroll on, we know there is no way she could walk to school…

I haven’t worked out the complete script yet, but there are plenty of true stories to draw from. One billion people in the world have disabilities, and around 80% of them live in developing countries like Indonesia. In fact, in the world’s poorest places, over one in five people have disabilities. These people live with much more than just physical or mental impairments. As my “little Indonesian girl” character would portray, people with disabilities experience huge barriers in education, employment and community life.

Barriers exist in all societies for disabled people, but they’re steepest in poorer communities, where access to these activities is often limited anyway. A child born with clubfoot in Australia will generally get treatment at birth to straighten and strengthen her legs, and still go to school, socialise and work with her peers. The little Indonesian girl, however, presents the reality in many developing countries.

In these places a child born with clubfoot will never receive treatment for this. Walking, if possible, will always be painful, and she could never travel far. In many communities her impairment would also be seen as a curse. She would likely face a lifetime of stigma and exclusion from her community, who assume that because she has a disability, she has no potential.

If this story was just a movie, this little girl would show us how poverty and disability create a vicious cycle. Being poor generally limits access to health care, good nutrition and safe conditions – which increases the likelihood of acquiring a disability.  And having a disability generally limits access to education, employment and community. Which in turn increases the likelihood of being trapped in poverty.

Clearly this movie is a drama. It’s a dramatic fact that children with disabilities make up one-third of all children in developing countries who should be in school but are not. What isn’t so clear is how this dire situation can be developed into a Hollywood ending.

Cue for us to cut to the silver fox in the skyscraper. Some of the big players in development are coming to recognise that people with disabilities are extremely vulnerable and excluded from their projects. How this recognition gets the little girl with clubfoot to school is more complicated.

RESULTS International (Australia) recently released a report examining how the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and AusAID include girls and children with disabilities in education programs they fund in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and the Philippines. The report finds that while all three agencies consider disability in their high-level development policies, “on the ground” many children with disabilities are still not getting to school.  Some progress has been made, particularly by AusAID, but children with disabilities continue to be profoundly excluded from education. And so the scene is set for the tale of the silver fox and the little village girl.

To be honest, I don’t think I’d like the movie. It would have a twee love plot and some expendable character I fancied would die. Then there would be the inevitable contrast between the skyscraper and village, reinforcing unhelpful paradigms of “us” and “them”, “benefactor” and “beneficiary”, “problem” and “solution”. But I would still go to see it. Because when millions of the world’s children are facing such extreme discrimination and exclusion, you need to take what you can to get the message out there.

Which is why I’m asking you to think about this: Would you have gone to see the film? Would you get teary at the injustice that the little girl endures? Would you spend the trip home ranting about the laudable development banks writing toothless policies from their air-conditioned skyscrapers? Would you Google some combination of “disability poverty Indonesia education” when procrastinating at work the next day? Or, even if you think the movie sounds like the worst thing since the Titanic, are you horrified by the fact that 70% of children with disabilities in Indonesia do not go to school?

If so, don’t let this storyline be an overlooked opportunity for Matt Damon to get an Oscar. Movie or not, there are still millions of children in the world being denied their rights because they have a disability. So get teary, rant, Google, find out more about ending the cycle of poverty and disability.

Their stories may not make it to the big screen, but these children still deserve the chance to write their own happy ending.

Most commented

29 comments

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    • gobsmack says:

      06:57am | 08/02/12

      Here’s a cynical ending.
      The global development bank, touched by the plight of the young girl and others in her position, decides to divert funds into providing all-terrain motorised wheel chairs.
      However, the money to do so comes from the funds that had been earmarked for the “path to education for the poorest” program.
      Result?  No-one gets to go to school.

      Reply

    • Tony of Poorakistan says:

      07:04am | 08/02/12

      I lost interest when you started talking about kids overseas, disabled or not. Our responsibility as Australians, is to Australians. We should help our own disabled people before we worry about anyone else.

      Reply

    • Chris says:

      07:52am | 08/02/12

      International Aid is a common debate and a complex issue.  The problem is this:  with all the suffering that we have not yet solved in our own backyard, how can we rationally divert funds to people in other countries for whom we are not legally responsible?

      The difficulty is - if we (using the global, royal, “we” there) are not, then who IS responsible?  Governments in developing countries are not necessarily concerned with the plight of their poor - or if they are, they lack the means to do anything about it.  Globally speaking, Australia is a very wealthy country full of very wealthy people.

      We do help our own disabled people, just as we help our own poor and our own sick.  The standard of living provided to those in need in Australia is very high when compared with other countries.  Unfortunately, of course, we do not help everyone in Aus, and there are sadly many in need who seem to fall under the radar.  But does that mean we should not be a compassionate country?  Or that our compassion should only extend to our borders?

      To me the compassionate imperative is to assist those in need - irrespective of their location.  The fact that we are separated by country does not mean that we are separated in terms of humanity.

      If the situation was reversed - would you not want someone to try and help you?

      Like I said - complex issues at a global level.  But for me, I’m pretty comfortable sticking with “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. 

      It was not compassion that caused the global economic meltdown - it was selfishness and greed.

      Cheerio,
      C

    • Mrs Usher says:

      08:27am | 08/02/12

      Australian causes/charities, down the hall, turn left, 2nd door on the right.

    • Anonymous says:

      08:32am | 08/02/12

      And attitudes like that help prevent the progression of humankind. How’s your comfy chair in your air-conditioned room? Eat a nice dinner last night? Why not quench your thirst with some non-diseased, chilled filtered water? Adequate? Australians with disabilities already get huge amounts of support. I imagine your opinion would be very different if you were less able and in a developing country. The world needs more compassion.

    • James1 says:

      09:23am | 08/02/12

      Personally, I prefer that any money I give to charity goes overseas.  Disabled and other disadvantaged groups in Australia live very well by the standards of the disadvantaged in places such as Africa. 

      But then, I like my money to go where it does the most good, not where it goes to people who happen to be born in the same country as me.  That is probably because I am the son of, and husband to, immigrants, and see country of birth as irrelevant.

    • Rick of the Dustbowl says:

      09:27am | 08/02/12

      “He was a cruel man….....cruel but fair.”

    • SimonFromLakemba says:

      09:53am | 08/02/12

      @James1

      Unfortunately a lot of international aid goes into the hands of despots who’s own people they are harming.

      I wonder if NGOs like World Vision etc have to pay a government fee to work in those places?

    • Bertrand says:

      10:14am | 08/02/12

      You’re right Tony.

      The lives of foreigners are less valuable than those of Australians.

      Particularly if they are brown or black or something.

      Pull your head in mate.

    • Ginger Mick says:

      10:18am | 08/02/12

      ‘a cruel man…cruel but fair’
      ‘Yeah…..after that I used to go round his flat every Sunday lunchtime to apologize and we’d shake hands and then he’d nail my head to the floor’

    • James1 says:

      10:56am | 08/02/12

      This is an issue Simon, which is why I choose very carefully who I support.  At the moment, we give money to Fred Hollows Foundation, because they can directly quantify what your money is doing, and where it is doing it.  Also, the actual work they are doing conforms to my own personal philosophy - they give the needlessly blind the chance to make a living for themselves and their families, rather than simply donating goods or building a well in a village and moving on.

      I consider the taxes I pay to be my Australian charity.  Our social welfare system is available to every Australian citizen who needs it and is incredibly generous, and as such I figure I already do too much for my fellow Australians.

    • Craig says:

      11:53am | 08/02/12

      There is no such species as “Australian” (and even if there were, if you were not Indigenous you could not claim it).

      Ignoring the rest of the world is a poor survival strategy for a small, lightly defended, rich nation.

    • SimonFromLakemba says:

      01:35pm | 08/02/12

      @James1

      Well put, my thoughts as well.

    • Oliver says:

      07:43am | 08/02/12

      Well get cracking Tony and gob! As the article points out, whatever the limits of your world view, politics, rich or poor, you can do something to help someone with disability. The point is not that ‘they’ are all in Indonesia, the point is it is hard every where

      Reply

    • Think global, act local says:

      08:02am | 08/02/12

      Great piece. @Tony of Poorakistan ...What? If a problem has no direct impact then why worry? Wow, you hear about Australia being parochial . What a shame. Caring about what happens to kids in far flung places doesn’t mean we have to not care about what happens here.

      Reply

    • onlooker says:

      08:17am | 08/02/12

      I am very sorry for anyone disabled, life is hard enough without having a disability, but I do agree our responsibility lies within Australia. We can’t save the World , we can only take care of those on our shores. Disabled people are in every country of the world, each country should do its best to help them.

      Reply

    • Rose says:

      10:30am | 08/02/12

      Sorry but this only help Australians philosophy is crap. One of the main reasons International aid is so important is that it helps ensure our own security. Lifting people out of poverty in overseas countries reduces the risk of civil unrest, terrorism and ultimately reduces the number of refugees displaced in unstable countries.  I agree with SimonfromLakemba that there is a risk of donations and aid being misappropriated by corrupt governments, but that is not a reason to stop providing aid, it just means that we, as a world, need to get better at targetting aid and ensuring outcomes.
      Australia is wealthy enough to take care of its own as well as being a good global citizen.

    • Jay76 says:

      10:42am | 08/02/12

      While this view may have been appropriate a few decades or centuries ago, the increase in global interaction makes it a short-sighted one.

      As Rose mentions, international security is heavily affected by the well-being of all countries and the raising of living standards across the globe is vital to its maintenance.

    • Mel says:

      11:31am | 08/02/12

      Our responsibility does lie within Australia, however, we can always try help of people not on our shores if we are able to do so.  We can try and save the world (or at least try to help and improve quality of life for people everywhere, not just Australians) if it’s within our means. You just don’t want to. Where does it end? I only help people in my town? In my state? I agree with helping Australians first, but I don’t agree with ONLY helping people that are in Australia. I’d rather help children with disabilities in other countries go to school before helping Australians for things that don’t require help. Unemployent benefits for people who just don’t want to work and the baby bonus for example. These things are not exactly what I would call “necessary”.

    • subotic says:

      10:26am | 08/02/12

      In Australia, being a divorced white Australian born male between 18 and 55 means more than just bloody stigma & exclusion….

      Reply

    • ian says:

      12:21pm | 08/02/12

      subotic I don’t think I’ve ever read anything more self-indulgent than that.  You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

      Reply

    • Erick says:

      02:03pm | 08/02/12

      @ian - Your comment is an example of the sorts of problems that subotic is talking about.

    • Rose says:

      02:23pm | 08/02/12

      Erick, how the hell does the plight of a “divorced white Australian born male between 18 and 55” have anything to do with aid to the disabled in foreign countries. It is incredibly unnecessary and self-indulgent to try and distort every conversation to a pet peeve which, apart from anything else, is far from accurate.
      Maybe you boys should take your blinkers off and get some perspective.

    • subotic says:

      12:35pm | 09/02/12

      @Rose, when a woman speaks up (in or out of context) we applaud the fact that she is bold and fearless and should be rewarded for her initiative in making herself heard.

      When a man speaks up, particularly a white Australian male, we can’t wait to shut the poor bastard up.

      If that’s not a case of discrimination and “disability”, then what is?

      Is it only discrimination when it’s discrimination the way YOU wish to see it, through your higher interpretations of life, the universe, and everything?

    • Kika says:

      02:53pm | 08/02/12

      I think it’s really sad and a fact of life that some kids will be born disabled, and some adults will become disabled. I think we can all be thankful then that we live in a country with a welfare system, albeit a mediocre one, that takes care of people with disabilities. This article highlights that truth. Once upon a time society chucked those with disabilities to the curb and made them beg forever.

      Reply

    • Taniele Gofers says:

      03:56pm | 09/02/12

      Lucy, what a fantastic article! You are right, drawing attention to the injustices faced by people with disabilities in the developed world is vitally important. There is a gap between what aid organisations, like AusAID and the World Bank ‘say’ they will do, and what they actually achieve on the ground. This isn’t entirely their fault, there is no doubt that there are significant barriers - both social and physical - to providing access for societies most marginalised groups to education. But, this report shows that these aid organisations need to work harder, and better, and close the gap between policy rhetoric and implementation. That way, we can know that our aid money is being delivered in the best possible way, to the people who need it most.

      Reply

    • Sandra says:

      06:44am | 10/02/12

      Thank you for this great article. It is so important to ensure agencies are implementing their policies, especially when it comes to the most vulnurable as they are always included in rhetoric, but issues are not addressed ‘on the ground as you say’. Education is one of the best ways we can end the cycle of extreme poverty, and this will benefit us all. Children with disabilities have the right to go to school, whether they live in Australia or Indonesia. 193 countries in the world have signed on to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, including the Australian government, which means that we DO have a responsibility to represent those who can’t speak for themselves a times.

      Reply

    • Sue P says:

      10:46am | 10/02/12

      Lucy, this piece is very interesting on a topic I’m passionate about - education for everyone.
      As a lucky country we can join other wealthy countries in providing equitable education aid to struggling nations. Australia also supports the achievement of the 8 United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Goal 2 is to ‘achieve universal primary education’ by 2015. We can make sure Australia does it’s fair share by writing to the Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr Rudd, and based on the RESULTS report you mention Lucy, suggest that we could do much more for kids with disabilities. That’s called ‘taking action’ - much better than doing nothing.

      Reply

    • Jeremy says:

      04:28pm | 12/02/12

      Fantastic article, Lucy, thanks for shining a light on this true story; have just written my MP about the need to ensure our education aid is meeting the needs of children with disabilities - hopefully it’ll be cameras and action next!

      Reply
 
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