'We know that persons with disabilities frequently live in deplorable conditions, and face physical and social barriers, which prevent their integration and full participation in the community.
As a result, millions of adults and children throughout the world are segregated, deprived of virtually all their rights, and sometimes lead wretched and marginalized lives. This is completely unacceptable'.
Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, November 2000

In Africa, Asia and all the countries of the South, between 4% and 5% of the population are disabled.

There are two main ways of thinking about disability. The first way is the traditional one – to think like a professional. The professional looks at the average in the population to decide what is normal. People who are significantly less able to do physical tasks or to hear, see or think like most other people, are classified as the disabled. The professional then looks at the small resources in the Disability budget and decides how many of the disabled can be helped in the limited ways that they think best.

A newer and more powerful approach uses the Human Rights approach and thinks in terms of Inclusion. Human Rights say that everybody, regardless of sex, race, disability etc. should have a dwelling, food, education etc. Inclusion says that the disabled should be brought into the mainstream.

This approach sees disability as something created not only by the problem (e.g. blindness) but also by the way society sees the problem and how it reacts to the problem. In some societies, a blind person is seen as “differently abled”; there is money available for appropriate schooling, aids and adaptations. That person can reasonably expect some of what most people receive – education, paid employment, a family. But in another society the same person could be kept out of sight, seen as a stigma on the family and deprived of almost any chances or choices.