Writing in the Boston Globe, former U.S. ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith calls for an international effort to support refugees who have disabilities. These people are neglected, marginalized and largely invisible, she says, and have long been excluded from care programs because there was little reliable data on their numbers.

An upcoming report by the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children documents that there are up to 3.5 million refugees with disabilities around the world.

We know from witnessing many examples of remarkable people who have overcome the barriers surrounding disabilities that they, too, possess skills, knowledge, and experience that can help them remake their lives and rebuild their communities. Yet for much of the world, displaced people who are disabled simply do not exist.

Because their situation is widely viewed as peripheral to that of the overall refugee population, they rarely figure in tallies of the displaced. And there is usually little or no provision for them in mainstream assistance programs, let alone services tailored to their specific needs. Leaders of such programs should provide services and end this squandering of human potential.

… if we care enough to do enough, anything is possible.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 5:53 am and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, commentary, human rights, international, public attitudes, public policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post