The Value of Inclusive Development in Education, Health and Gender-Based Violence

When talking about empowerment of women and girls, I think about the many women I encountered in my 4 decades of existence. I start with my immediate family, then my formative years at the all-girls catholic school, the first mentor that believed in me and gave me opportunity to practice what I learned in the university until I was thrown into the world of development.

As I got more involved in the world of healthcare, rehabilitation and empowerment I got to see the many facets of life faces by many people I devoted my life to help. I will be biased with this post, talking about disability and people with disability more than anyone else.

The reality of life is that every one of us will be disabled at any given time in our lives, only some of them are born with it while others contracted them by trauma and other diseases not of our choosing. Can we do something about preventing it happening to us? Yes, if you have the elixir to counter aging or if you’re struck by lightning like Adeline. But seriously no, we can only mitigate it in so many ways and let nature takes its course, only others don’t cope well with it and get more than what they bargained for.

How do you mitigate the causes of disability?

Congenital disabilities are hard to prevent especially if it’s genetic in nature – you cannot change your DNA. With the latest technology available in the health sector, genetic profiling becomes available and parents can decide to terminate pregnancy because of disability or any other rare conditions the unborn child will have. Which I don’t support because of my pro-life stand (which merits another post altogether). But for non-genetic in nature, we can do something about it by understanding that giving birth too young or too old will put the unborn child at risk in having disability. Good ante-natal care is key to making sure women get enducation, preparation and the nutrition they need feeding for two. The manner of delivery is also key – mothers under stress or in a stressful situation can cause trauma to the unborn child or immediately to the underdeveloped brains of the newborn babies.

What about the other causes of disability?

Trauma is one cause of disability – violence, traffic accident, occupational and industrial accidents, armed conflicts and disastersfound everywhere.

• One such trauma -- domestic violence, can cause not only physical disability but also mental, visual and hearing form of disability for the victims. Psychological trauma when left undiagnosed and treated may pose more damage to the person long term, affecting not only the person’s life but also of her family and her relationship in the community. Coping mechanism is stretched when there’s no external support, even if there is, it does not treat people individually to address specific problems to design good intervention – often a sweeping generalization to accommodate as many people as possible is happening which is of no fault to us but to the circumstances.

And there is aging, the normal cycle of life. Community have to anticipate its impact in the society and adapt the environment for the aging members of their community.

So how do we respond to it?

Education is still key. Though easier said than done, every women and girls (and men) need to be educated about prevention and more. As we always say “health is wealth” then we should educate them not only of science but also of economics of being healthy and of being sick. That way everybody would know how to compensate for the way they live their lives and can make informed decision on it.

Promoting inclusive development is another way to do it. We talk a whole lot about women empowerment, access to justice, education, health, economics, social and political participation etc. but we talk about it in compartmentalized way – in parallel from each other. Issues are inter-connected and one issue or topic should not be discussed as a stand-alone issue but rather as part and parcel of all the others that affect a person’s general well-being.

• In the disability sector – we talk about education for all but there’s not many provisions in the many guidelines, protocols, speeches available that talks about how to include children with disability in schools. Disability is dealt mostly by disability organization and other like-minded organization at the micro level, I always say \"an after-thought\". Government never had shortages of ministerial meetings and documents with decade long opportunity to make changes for the lives of many but still we struggle. Many schools still struggle to accept children with special needs or those with learning disabilities. Many teachers are not trained to handle such students and therefore abandon one-on-one approach because of the claim of serving the many than just one child.


• The same goes for the subject of health prevention in maternal and child care – we only talk about birth and death of babies, we measure country’s progress with it but we don’t talk about how many are born with disability or mothers who had disability after a difficult delivery to be included in the future planning of the country’s health sector. In the MDG, the decrease in newborn mortality is a sign that the country’s overall health system is improving because more babies are born alive, lived through the age of 5 and are being ready for school but it fails to measure how much of those born alive are born with disability? When they reached the age of 6 months or 2 years old do they follow the normal developmental milestone? Are the school ready to take children with learning disability and behavioral problems? We don’t have that data because it is not routine to check for those … new born screening does not count the number of children born with disability or those will grow up with global developmental delay.

There is still so much to do, but we already had the headstart in the world of development – many documents, experts have done it. We just need to get all the facts and what works in line and try to weave them together to serve a whole lot more than what is obvious.

Disability may not be seen as important based on the many documents I read. It may not be seen interesting or important or that many think it’s difficult to do – but I say, it is important and it can be done if we try harder.

Inclusive Development is cheaper if you look at it in the long run – making plans, designing budget and implementing program in an inclusive way will NOT leave anyone behind making HUMAN RIGHTS work for all.

Additional readings: World Disability Report 2010; The Dream of Inclusion for All

https://youtu.be/BNhVu6kD-NI?list=PLhNAakJJ_8Zedi-yVVe5S5nZK1wLY4smL