CBM Australia’s vision is of an inclusive world in which all people with disabilities enjoy their human rights and achieve their full potential.
This is the third and final article in our Surrender Conference 2019 series. If you missed Part 1 about Ipul’s insights into some of the barriers to disability inclusion or Part 2 about Stevie’s journey as a Christian woman living with disability, you can find these in our Stories collection.
Here, we will share with you a little of the research behind the stories from the Papua New Guinea Church Partnership Program Disability Inclusion Assessment Report funded by the Australian Government. CBM Australia shared findings from this report at the Surrender Conference to contribute to changing people’s attitudes towards disability, increasing participation and improving access for people with disabilities around the world.
Through researching and writing this report, one of the things CBM Australia learned was that women and girls with disabilities living in poverty face ‘triple jeopardy’. Triple jeopardy is a term used to refer to the compounding effects of discrimination faced by women with disabilities who live in poverty.
In Part 1, Ipul spoke about the fact that all people with disabilities face many barriers to inclusion within their communities. The report specified further barriers, which include:
- Negative community attitudes and discrimination
- Poverty
- Low education levels
- Lack of knowledge and understanding on disability rights and approaches in the country
- Inaccessible services, and
- Higher levels of gender-based violence and inequality than people without disabilities.
This report also demonstrated that we need to harness our resources to support and equip the Church Network to create the changes needed to better work with people with disabilities.
Some of the findings included:
- There is never enough advocacy and awareness – keep at it!
- A continued need to advocate for women and girls with disabilities
- There is an increasing demand for Community Based Inclusive Development knowledge and understanding
- It takes time to create change, so we need to be patient.
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