The Spring 2021 edition of the Disability History Association News includes a piece on disability in Kurdistan written by CGDS Deputy Director Dr. Lynn Rose. CGDS is an institutional member of the DHA.
Notes from the Center for Gender and Development Studies in Kurdistan-Iraq
We at the Center for Gender and Development Studies (CGDS) at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani, are happy to continue our institutional membership in the Disability History Association. We take an intersectional approach to gender justice, with a particular focus on disability rights and disability advocacy. Working with about ten advocacy and service groups in Sulaimani, we aim to incorporate disability identity into our research and people with disabilities (PWD) into our community. Disability history is an important part of our effort: a common history is crucial to unity and pride. On a larger scale, education about disability is critical. Following is an overview of the situation in Kurdistan.
Iraq has been in an emergency situation for many years and is finally entering a recovery/development stage. Many responses to disability, however, are oriented to the emergency phase. While services such as providing supplies, dealing with immediate medical trauma, and gathering data about the population of PWD is tremendously important, we now need to move toward models of sustainability in social, economic, and legal realms. The problem with soliciting nondisabled people for donations to help PWD is that while the model of pity and charity and presenting PWD as victims is effective in terms of raising money, as we know from the American “Pitython” model, it perpetuates the view of PWD as perpetual consumers. Under the gaze of charity, PWD are seen not as individuals, with the exception of the “poster child,” but as a homogenous lot of defective humans—and, when female, doubly-defective. Contrary to the slogan in the global north, “Nothing About Us Without Us” PWD in Iraq are rarely involved in any planning or analysis of the research about them.
The World Health Organization estimates that 15% of the world’s population is disabled, and that most of the disability is in the global South. The average prevalence rate of 15% places the number of persons with disabilities in the MENA region at approximately 30 million people, many of whom experience discrimination and social exclusion (World Bank 2009). The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities reported in 2019 that “Iraq has one of the largest populations of persons with disabilities in the world, including victims of conflict and terrorism who suffer injuries, trauma and suffering caused by Daesh, whose crimes and abuses amounted to crimes against humanity.” Iraq adopted the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2006; the first key recommendation in the follow-up report (2016) is to “implement a range of measures to shift the widespread charity-based perception of disability in Iraq to a rights-based approach to disability”; The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq confirmed this need in 2018 While demographic data are not exact, approximately 20,000 people with disabilities live in Kurdistan-Iraq, which is composed of four governorates (Duhok, Erbil, Halabja, and Sulaimani). Of these, 7,000 are in our area, the Sulaimani Governorate. A 2016 UN report estimates 4 million people in Iraq as a whole, and points out that there are disproportionately more PWD because of war. Of the PWD, 80% are poor, living on less than $3/day on average. As noted above, 15% of the world’s population is disabled, and that most of the disability is in the global South. The average prevalence rate of 15% places the number of persons with disabilities in the MENA region at approximately 30 million people.
While physical and economic barriers keep many PWD from meaningful participation, these are deeply rooted in institutionalized attitudinal barriers, which we must alleviate to effect real, lasting change. The problem will never go away unless and until we address its components systemically, and the “we” must include predominantly PWD. It is CGDS’s aim to address these deep underlying barriers.
The attitudinal barriers appear on three levels: individual, organizational, and community.At the individual level generational poverty, chronic illness and other invisible disability, lack of education, rural isolation, and gender discrimination compound political and social invisibility. Because of deeply embedded and often internalized patriarchy and misogyny, along with its manifestations (e.g., GBV, child marriage, polygamy), disabled women suffer disproportionately.
Second, the “silo effect” is a barrier at the group level: there is little communication between and among organizations for PWD (e.g., blind people have not joined forces with people with Down syndrome); there is little perception of commonalities among PWD. Service and advocacy organizations, furthermore, include mostly educated, urban PWD, mostly men, in their management.
Third, at the community level, we see a preference for economic solutions and the charity model over a human rights model, but no amount of money will effect lasting change until the needs and identities of PWD are articulated and heard. That said, we must also bear in mind that the social model of disability rights in the global North, based on independent individualism, is inappropriate in this interdependent, extended-family-based society.
“Disabled people are becoming the voices of their own stories,” observes Lawrence Carter-Long, of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund. While this phenomenon is underway in the global North, PWD are usually invisible in the global South, including in Iraq. Disabled women are even more invisible, and disabled rural women are the most invisible of all.
As an institute of higher education partnering with local disability organizations, we believe that we can produce something more than the sum of our parts. Our key, interrelated hypotheses are: 1) the voices of women with disabilities, presently unheard, are potential tools of self-determination and inclusion; 2) Several organizations of PWD have knowledge and experience; shared knowledge among PWD will facilitate and amplify a collective voice; 3) PWD, working together, can educate civil society about their identities and needs, thus moving away from the charity model towards participatory decision-making.
In spring 2020, CGDS conducted a series of oral interviews with local PWD. The following excerpt from one of the interviews summarizes the situation very well. Some people are sitting at home right now, and they can reprogram the whole system in the country. Society needs fixing. Universities should teach the humanity of people whether disabled or nondisabled. Pity is so dangerous. If you pity someone, this means that this person is different from this society. People should be respected.
You can find all of our activities and events on our website: https://auis.edu.krd/CGDS/
Photo description: A woman with her hair pulled back, wearing black trousers and a white-edged cape, stands in front of a large screen, gesturing at it with her left hand. On the screen we see the words Disability Community in white font on an orange circle, and to the right, eleven names of disability organizations in dark blue font. To the left of the screen is a white flip chart, and a fabric-draped table is in front of the screen.