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Young people with disabilities have the same right to Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) as their peers without disabilities, but their needs and rights are often overlooked. This study examines the SRH status of young people with disabilities in China. In particular, the study explored the sexuality-related knowledge, attitudes and behaviour of young people with disabilities as well as their access to sexuality-related information, education and services. The findings of the study are intended to provide evidence to support decision-making by government agencies, educators, development workers and other relevant stakeholders regarding developing and implementing disability-inclusive SRH and sexuality education policies and programmes for young people in China.

The study, using quantitative and qualitative methods, was conducted in 2015 among unmarried young persons aged 12 to 24 living with visual, hearing, physical and intellectual disabilities, in both urban and rural areas. The analysis was based on data collected through 707 completed valid questionnaires, 20 group interviews and 35 individual interviews with young people with disabilities, and individual interviews with 60 parents and teachers, along with one case study.

Purpose: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities aims to protect the human rights and dignity of all people with disabilities. In low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), one way this goal is pursued is through Community-Based Rehabilitation (CBR), a strategy to support the full and equal participation of people with disabilities. In spite of policy and community-based interventions, people with disabilities continue to experience inequities in many areas of life - one of these being their sexual and reproductive health (SRH) rights. This scoping review explored the literature to understand how CBR programming has supported sex(uality), sexual abuse prevention, and SRH for people with disabilities.

Methods: Arksey and O’Malley’s (2007) framework was used to identify relevant studies in academic and grey literature. This included six databases, the WHO website, and five Regional CBR Network websites. Relevant studies were selected using criteria and data was charted to examine the quantity, variation, and nature of CBR interventions.

Results: Fifteen studies were identified. The majority were implemented in Africa; targeted all people with disabilities, regardless of gender, age, or type of disability; and frequently focussed on the topic of HIV/AIDS.  The interventions were most commonly designed to educate people with disabilities on issues of sex(uality), sexual abuse prevention, or SRH.

Conclusion: A number of studies discussed CBR programmes that aim to support sex(uality), sexual abuse prevention and SRH for people with disabilities, yet gaps were identified that indicate that certain populations and topics are being overlooked by CBR interventions.

Implications: CBR practitioners can focus on filling the gaps identified in this review through future programming. Further action must concentrate on implementing a variety of CBR Matrix strategies to address comprehensive issues related to sex(uality), sexual abuse prevention, or SRH.

Disability, CBR and Inclusive Development, Vol 30, No 1 (2019)

The purpose of this paper is to explore ex-combatants’ understandings of disability and the pathways for social reintegration available to them in Colombia. The qualitative data for the study include seven in-depth interviews with ex-combatants and 29 with key informants, including disabled people’s organisations, government agencies, international organisations and academic groups. Findings suggest that transition to civilian life for ex-combatants is made more difficult by inadequate procedures, lack of support and complex administrative data vacuums. Social determinants, historical prejudice against persons with disabilities, high levels of unemployment and political polarisation in a post conflict context combine to trigger poverty traps. The findings indicate pitfalls in the early implementation of the Colombian peace process, which did not consider structural issues that affected transition to civilian life for ex-combatants with disabilities. Furthermore, key enablers for social inclusion such as peer-to-peer support have been identified by respondents. This paper concludes that more needs to be done to enhance the voices of ex-combatants with disabilities and to understand the profound meaning of acquiring impairments through participation in conflict, as well as how post-conflict responses could enable these individuals to gain the skills they need to successfully reintegrate into their communities. 

Disability and the Global South, 2019, Vol.6, No. 2

Disability studies and the medical humanities have recently garnered increasing attention from academics interested in challenging modern, biological understandings of health and illness that dehumanize and alienate people with disabilities and those who are ill. While these discourses have much to contribute to the understanding of human diversity, including the study of race and ethnicity, the risk of conflating illness, disability, and historical forms of systemic discrimination remains a point of concern. As a black Martinican, clinician, and philosopher, Frantz Fanon draws our attention to the importance of healing the physical, affective, and epistemological wounds of coloniality by attending to the social relations that produce them. Fanon exposes the limits of hegemonic epistemologies of the body, raising the question of what other kinds of knowledge about health and illness are likewise excluded by the coloniality of knowledge. Theorizing the clinic as an important location from which revolutionary thought can emerge, I provide a decolonial framework for understanding how a sustained encounter between critical race and disability studies can generate new conceptions of health and healing that requires thinking about a different kind of pain and suffering not captured by the current rubric but to which we, in the twenty-first century, must nevertheless attend.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2019, Vol. 6 No. 1

The first living condition-survey among people with intellectual disability in Sami areas in Norway was conducted in 2017. The purpose of this article is to present and discuss results from the living-condition study, with a focus on the results related to mental health and bullying as a risk factor for poor mental health among people with intellectual disability and a Sami background. We have conducted a questionnaire survey among people with intellectual disability in Sami areas, with and without a Sami background (N = 93). People with intellectual disability have poorer mental health compared to the population in general and those with Sami background have the poorest mental health. Bullying is one of several factors that increase the risk of poor mental health among people with intellectual disability and Sami background. Having a Sami background makes people with intellectual disability more disposed to poor mental health.

Background: Most people with disabilities the world over can be found in the Majority (or ‘economically developing’) World. This is also where most of the world’s hungry and malnourished are found. We argue that the intersectionality between disability and nutrition may best be understood through a food security framework, and we position all people living with disability, including those experiencing feeding and swallowing disabilities, as at risk for food insecurity, especially those living in humanitarian emergency contexts.

Objectives: This study aimed to explore and describe the knowledge and experience of humanitarian aid workers (HAWs) and health care professionals (HCPs) in food assistance contexts with regard to the nutrition and food security of people living with disabilities.

Method: In this exploratory, descriptive study, 16 participants with experience in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia participated in an online survey. Three survey participants with extensive experience were also interviewed. Data analysis involved descriptive statistics and thematic content analysis.

Results: Results revealed that participants had generally low levels of exposure to and experience with disability, including swallowing and feeding disorders.

Conclusions: Reduced knowledge of HAWs and HCPs regarding disability and the lack of professionals such as speech–language therapists, who manage disability-specific issues such as feeding and swallowing disorders, may affect the food security of people living with disabilities in food assistance contexts.

This article analyses the claims of contemporary disability rights activists mobilising in a context where de facto second- class citizenship co-exists with legal and political declarations about the rights of disabled people. As an empirical case, it focuses on the blog ‘Full Participation.Now’, which was initiated by disability rights activists in Sweden. Drawing upon citizenship research, the article points to the tensions and dilemmas featuring the bloggers’ demand for participation and equality, as well as the challenges relative to their struggle. Although the bloggers formulate contrasting arguments, the article highlights that the activists share a common aspiration for ‘full citizenship’.

Articles include:

• Editorial: Intersecting Indigeneity, colonialisation and disability
• Yuin, Kamilaroi, Sámi, and Maori people’s reflections on experiences as ‘Indigenous scholars’ in ‘Disability Studies’ and ‘Decolonisation’
• Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology: Practitioners’ Reflections on Indigeneity, Disability and Neo-Colonial Marketing
• ‘My granddaughter doesn’t know she has disabilities and we are not going to tell her’: Navigating Intersections of Indigenousness, Disability and Gender in Labrador
• Disabling Bodies of/and Land: Reframing Disability Justice in Conversation with Indigenous Theory and Activism
• The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its implications for the health and wellbeing of indigenous peoples with disabilities: A comparison across Australia, Mexico and New Zealand
• Challenges in global Indigenous–Disability comparative research, or, why nation-state political histories matter
• ‘Black on the inside’: albino subjectivity in the African novel
• The role of indigenous and external knowledge in development interventions with disabled people in Burkina Faso: the implications of engaging with lived experiences
• An intersection in population control: welfare reform and indigenous people with a partial capacity to work in the Australian northern territory
• Inclusion of marginalised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples with neurocognitive disability in the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)

The importance of online communities for parents of people with disabilities has been discussed by many scholars in the fields of Digital and Disability Studies, showing, for instance, the importance of social support and the formation of social ties. In order to contribute to this scholarship, this paper explores how collective identity models are built and circulated by parents of autistic people in one of the biggest Brazilian online communities about the subject, ‘Sou autista… conheça o meu mundo’ (I am autistic…get to know my world). The results were obtained through a digital ethnography, based on participant observation and an exchange of information with the members of the community studied. Based on the data collected, the study concludes that the collective identity models that circulate in this community can be grouped into legitimising, resistant, and project identities, as postulated by Castells (2010). The different views reflect how parents see autism and represent the ways it is treated in Brazilian society.

Disability and the Global South, 2018 Vol.5, No. 1