Welfare Reform on the Web (February 2011): Services for the disabled - overseas

Disability, politics and poverty in a majority world context

C. Barnes and A. Sheldon

Disability and Society, vol. 25, 2010, p. 771-782

The spread of free market economics has generated huge inequalities within and between nations. Western notions of impairment and disability are now commonplace across the developing world. This has led to the systematic exclusion of disabled people from the mainstream of community life, the generation of an international disabled people's movement, and the demand for legal frameworks with which to address the multiple deprivations encountered by people viewed as disabled. The international disabled people's movement must link with other political groups to combat the poverty and exclusion encountered by disabled people in all societies.