Degenhardt / Ebrahimi / Dehsorkhi Dialogues on Disability and Inclusion between Isfahan and Hamburg

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-3-7528-0888-9
Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 232 Seiten

Scientists and students of the Universities in Isfahan and Hamburg are in an intensive dialogue on the social and cultural challenges as well as on education- and curriculum-related issues in putting the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) into effective practice in both cities. The project intends to strengthen three areas of dialogue: (1) the international scientific dialogue between the two universities on concepts such as disability, rehabilitation, inclusion, accessibility or universal design; (2) municipal dialogues between each university and the specific local organizations and institutions working for the disabled; (3) the institutional dialogue for putting the UNCRPD into practice in the respective university context in Isfahan and Hamburg and on the further development of the curricula and of teaching formats. The book presents first results of the project and thematically relevant contributions of research groups in Iran, Germany and other countries.

Dr. Sven Degenhardt ist seit 1996 Professor für Pädagogik bei Beeinträchtigung des Sehens (Blinden- und Sehbehindertenpädagogik) an der Fakultät für Erziehungswissenschaft der Universität Hamburg. Er ist Diplomlehrer für Mathematik und Physik und Diplomlehrer für Sehgeschädigte und promovierte zum Dr. paed. an der Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. Seine Schwerpunkte in Lehr- und Forschungsprojekten liegen in den Bereichen: Entwicklungszusammenarbeit, Darstellung blinder und sehbehinderter Menschen in Medien, assistive Technologien für blinde und sehbehinderte Menschen, Physiologische Optik, barrierefreie Beleuchtung und Raumgestaltung, Zugänglichkeit und Universelles Design sowie Qualität und Evaluation.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Degenhardt, Sven

Ebrahimi, Amrollah

Dehsorkhi, Hamid Nasiri

Schroeder, Joachim

Leseproben

II International Discussions
3 Disability Inclusion in a Global World: Moving towards Disability Inclusive Development – Development Cooperation before and after the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
(Veronika Hilber) Starting with Christoffel In 2006, the United Nations adopted a new human rights treaty, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). The adoption stands at the end of decades long intense lobbying and advocacy of the disability rights movement. The Treaty doesn’t lay out any new or special rights for persons with disabilities. It merely spells out what human rights mean for persons with disabilities and what need to be the focus areas when we want persons with disabilities enjoy the same human rights as any other human beings. This Treaty is remarkable in many ways. It is the first Human Rights Treaty to be ratified not only by national states- with now 174 States Parties around the world- and thus is one of the most successful human rights treaties of all times, but also the first to be ratified by a “regional integration organization”, the European Union. Another innovation is its Art. 32 on international cooperation: it recognizes that, in fact, we are in a global world, in which so many things are closely interconnected and in which we can only reach our goals in close cooperation. States take mutual responsibility in promoting the goals set by the Convention and the realization of the rights it contains. For CBM, Art. 32, but also Art. 11 on situations of risk and humanitarian emergencies are our “pet articles” of the Convention. We are a Christian development organization committed to improve the quality of life for persons with disability, their families and their communities living in so-called “developing countries” around the world. Our vision is an inclusive world in which all people enjoy their human rights and achieve their full potential, to which we aim to contribute by working towards a transformative change in structures, systems and attitudes. CBM as an organization is over a hundred years old. We come a long way from a charity based organization increasingly becoming an organization with a needs based approach, involving national and local partners, persons with disabilities and their representative organizations (Disabled People’s Organizations, DPOs) in our programs, and a human rights based approach to development. We are on a journey, and although we are undeniably making progress, we have not arrived yet in an inclusive world. In the following minutes, I will lay out the developments international cooperation has made throughout the years, explain what has already changed in development cooperation since the adoption of the UNCRPD in 2006, and give an outlook on what still needs to be improved for a better implementation of the UNCRPD in international development cooperation. In this regard, I will briefly touch the importance of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in the context of disability inclusive development. Throughout my presentation, I will refer to examples drawn from CBM’s work for illustration. Let us start right with the beginnings of CBM as an organization and look at what development work with a focus on disability used to be over a hundred years back. Ernst Jakob Christoffel, whose name the German version of CBM, Christoffel Blindenmission, bears in its name, was a young German pastor born in 1876. He felt a calling to work for persons- particularly children- with visual impairments in the Islamic world. His first mission led him to eastern Turkey where he was responsible for the administration of two orphanages. It was then that the particularly difficult situation of blind children first drew his attention. After World War I, he was not allowed to pursue his work in Turkey. In 1925, he moved on to Persia and by 1928, Isfahan had become the new major base of the Blind Mission, being located in the south of Persia, with then the highest concentration of blind persons. About Isfahan, Christoffel said, full of admiration “Isfahan is said to be the most beautiful city of Persia […]. She is the city of gardens, palaces and mosques whose unreal beauty appears inebriant. The Meidan i Schah and its surroundings are like a tale from Thousand and One Nights come true in the very present.”/1/ The disability and development approach at Christoffel’s time was a charity approach. The focus was to help persons with disabilities, and to help them adapt to their environment. Christoffel felt like a father for “his” children, and even adopted two orphans under his care. The perspective might therefore seem rather paternalistic, although this judgment would be harsh on Christoffel and not reflect the very modern aspects of his approach. E.g., Christoffel would not restrict himself to “only” blind children. Soon, he became aware of children with other impairments like hearing impairments and tried to find ways to help them better adapt to their environment. He was a very acute observer and noticed what others wouldn’t see. Today, he would perhaps work with children with mental health issues, who in our societies often are not accounted for, can’t enjoy their rights and are considerably stigmatized. Christoffel didn’t take solely a medical or rehabilitation approach, but also tried to find ways to provide children with disabilities with access to education. Which was revolutionary in its way, as there were many misconceptions- and if we are honest, these misconceptions still exist today- about the capacity of children with disabilities to learn, to follow a vocational training and ultimately to earn their living with decent work. In order to be able to teach blind children to read, Christoffel even invented the Persian braille alphabet. Christoffel was very much motivated by his Christian faith and the second Great Commandment “thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”, he was not inspired by the notion of human rights, a concept that didn’t exist at his time the way we know it today and particularly as we understand it since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. What has changed with the UNCRPD? The UNCRPD is the result of a long struggle of the disability rights movement. For decades, disability advocates from the UN, non- governmental organizations, from within governments, and persons with disabilities from all over the world have fought for a rights based approach to disability and for the recognition that all human rights, without exception, apply to every human being, again without exception, at all times and everywhere and to the same degree. This notion is the very essence of Human Rights being universal, interrelated and indivisible. We need to particularly recognize the implication of persons with disabilities and their representative organizations in the creation of this new Human Rights Treaty. Not only have they been instrumental activists for their own cause, claiming “Nothing about us without us”, persons with disability have contributed to drafting the UNCRPD as it is today, making it really a convention of, not only for, persons with disabilities. With the UNCRPD, we reach a paradigm shift from the charity model of Christoffel’s time to the human rights model/2/ of disability. We understand that our point of view needs to be one that understands the human person as a rights bearer living in a particular social context that may be more or less conducive to the enjoyment of his or her rights. The enjoyment of rights being guaranteed by international human rights law, we need to look at the elements hindering human persons from enjoying their rights and work on dismantling these elements. We need to fix the environment, not the person. The UNCRPD doesn’t create new rights for persons with disabilities. It only spells out the rights we already find in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the two International Covenants of 1966, on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and on Political and Civil Rights (ICCPR). We have human rights such as the right to education (Art. 24 UNCRPD), health (Art. 25 UNCRPD), work and employment (Art. 27 UNCPRD), life (Art. 10 UNCRPD), access to justice (Art. 13 UNCRPD) etc. that we also find in these two International Covenants. When we read Art. 32 of the Convention, we realize that all of these rights of the Convention need to be ensured by States Parties in international cooperation, as much by States Parties of so- called developing countries as by those of “developed” countries. In order to help us understand how a development project, a sector becomes inclusive and compliant with the UNCPRD, the convention has not only given us the different rights, i.e. that we would have Art. 24 UNCRPD on Education and Art. 32 on International Cooperation as our only reference points for an inclusive education development project. The UNCRPD provides us with eight core principles that serve us as a guideline, a lens through which we need to take a look at policies, programs and projects to see whether they comply with the convention and where would be the areas that we need to improve. When we look at the UNCRPD principles of Art. 3 of the Convention, we have an enormously challenging task before us. With the UNCRPD and its principles, we now know what inclusive development projects, what an inclusive world should look like, but we are...