Over 1 billion people. That’s the number of people living with a disability worldwide. That’s 1 in 6. When we consider our family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc., we realize that disability has affected someone we know. Disability is a family that anyone can join at any point in their life.
Yet people with disabilities remain largely excluded from the mainstream human rights agenda, and their intersectionality with the rights of women, children, older people, indigenous peoples, LGBTQI+ people and other identities is under-utilized, let alone integrated into conversations about how to tackle climate change, poverty and inequality around the world.
The disability rights movement, increasingly disability-led, has rallied around the mantra “no talk about us without us” and has called on governments and international organisations to include people with disabilities in planning and decision-making. In recent years, disability advocacy groups have changed this slogan to “no talk without us”, recognising that many challenges affect us all and demanding a seat at every debate.
The late disability rights pioneer Judy Heumann said, “When others treat you like a third-class citizen, the first thing you need is self-belief and a knowledge that you have rights. The second thing you need is a group of friends to fight back with you.”
As a global human rights organization with a dedicated team focused on disability rights, Human Rights Watch sees itself as an ally and partner fighting alongside people with disabilities and their representative organizations. Ten years ago, we founded our disability rights division. Today, we have grown to a team of 13 people based in nine cities in four regions, most of whom are disabled themselves or have a family member with a disability. We are expanding our reach to include the rights of older people, who face discrimination and abuse every day, and we are engaging other divisions of Human Rights Watch to incorporate disability and ageing perspectives into their work.
It has been a journey of humility. Part of that journey has been confronting prejudice. While human rights organizations address racism and sexism in our communities, few address the more invisible “isms”: ableism and ageism. Abilityism is essentially rooted in the assumption that disabled people need to be “fixed” and reflects our biases and preconceived ideas about disabled people. Similarly, ageism takes the form of negative stereotypes, prejudices, and behaviors toward older people and older age.
As a result, disabled people and older people are often denied basic rights that the general population takes for granted. In many countries, disabled people and older people are institutionalized and isolated from the community. They are often looked down upon in the name of “protection” and denied the right to make decisions about their lives. However, denial of legal capacity often leads to abuses such as forced sterilization, forced medical procedures, indefinite detention and deprivation of civil rights. For many disabled people and older people, it means not being recognized and treated as equal human beings.
Guided and inspired by the experiences of people with disabilities, Human Rights Watch has been helping to change these mindsets by rooting our approach in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities adopted more than 15 years ago. For example, in Mexico, we joined with “My Right to Decide” a coalition of disability organizations, human rights groups, and academics to push for groundbreaking legal reform that gives legal capacity to everyone over the age of 18. It is difficult to overstate how significant this achievement is for millions of people in Mexico, as it is the foundation for many other rights.
“All I want is to be able to make my own decisions, just like everyone else,” said Ricardo Adair, an autistic person who led the advocacy effort.
Disability inclusion is also strategic and has tangible impact. Over the past decade, our team has worked with colleagues across the organization, working on different topics in different regions and conducting research on issues such as violence against women and girls with disabilities and the need for comprehensive humanitarian responses during armed conflict. Our work with torture experts and mental health advocates has led to growing calls to denounce the shackling and chaining of people with psychosocial disabilities as torture, leading several countries to ban this practice that has harmed hundreds of thousands of people.
Working with disability rights, women’s rights and humanitarian organisations, we organised the first-ever UN Security Council briefing by a person with a disability to discuss the situation in Syria in 2019. Noujeen Mustafa, a young Syrian activist in a wheelchair, had a clear message: “This is [delegates] Make a big statement and then move on… [Y]You can and should do more to ensure people with disabilities are included in all aspects of your work. We can’t wait any longer.”
As a human rights organization, Human Rights Watch quickly recognized that we could not advocate for the right to inclusion of people with disabilities unless we lived these principles ourselves. While there is still much work to be done, we are working to embed a disability-inclusive approach throughout our organization and have the full support of our senior management and Board of Directors.
We have implemented subtitling and sign language interpretation in many of our facilities. Our Multimedia ProductsWe have committed to making our events and office spaces accessible. We are producing easy-to-read versions of our reports and other publications to make our research accessible to people with intellectual disabilities. We are also hosting “relaxed” screenings during the Human Rights Watch Film Festival to make our events more welcoming and inclusive. We are conducting a web accessibility audit and a reasonable accommodation policy, and are considering long-term investments in accessibility and inclusion efforts across our organization. We have always room for improvement, and we are not yet at the gold standard we aspire to, but we are learning and adapting, taking advice from disability advocates around the world.
Social justice, equity, and inclusion are buzzwords we hear often in human rights movements and in business. But these buzzwords alone cannot bring about meaningful change for people who have been historically marginalized and isolated. Only action can. Judy Heumann, a mentor to me and countless others, called for us to “demand what we believe in.” As disabled and older people around the world demand equal human rights, we should all stand in solidarity with them.