Today, the world population is over 7 billion people and more than one billion people, or approximately 15 per cent of the world’s population, live with some form of disability; 80 per cent live in developing countries.
What disability means
A disability is a condition or function judged to be significantly impaired relative to the usual standard of an individual of their group. The term is often used to refer to individual functioning, including physical impairment, sensory impairment, cognitive impairment, intellectual impairment, mental illness, and various types of chronic disease. This usage has been described by some disabled people as being associated with a medical model of disability.
Persons with disabilities, “the world’s largest minority”, have generally poorer health, lower education achievements, fewer economic opportunities and higher rates of poverty than people without disabilities. This is largely due to the lack of services available to them (like information and communications technology (ICT), justice or transportation) and the many obstacles they face in their everyday lives. These obstacles can take a variety of forms, including those relating to the physical environment, or those resulting from legislation or policy, or from societal attitudes or discrimination.
People with disabilities are at much higher risk of violence:
- Children with disabilities are almost four times more likely to experience violence than non-disabled children.
- Adults with some form or disability are 1.5 times more likely to be a victim of violence than those without a disability.
- Adults with mental health conditions are at nearly four times the risk of experiencing violence.
Factors which place people with disabilities at higher risk of violence include stigma, discrimination, and ignorance about disability, as well as a lack of social support for those
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) recognizes that the existence of barriers constitutes a central component of disability. Under the Convention, disability is an evolving concept that “results from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.”
Facts & Figures
- 7 billion people: world population
- Over 1 billion people in the world have some form of disability, that’s 1 in 7
- More than 100 million disabled persons are children
- Children with disabilities are almost four times more likely to experience violence than non-disabled children
- 80% of all people with disabilities live in a developing country
- 50% of disabled persons cannot afford health care
- 180 countries have ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
- 7 targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) explicitly refer to persons with disabilities