Disability, Poverty and Development: Mapping the Terrain

Abstract

Numbers remain a powerful force in a world compelled to simplify and contain life’s nuances and complexities. They are work, money and power for those producing them, but they can also be strong political tools for action. The urge to enumerate has not spared disability in the attempt to make it epistemologically, discursively and practically manageable. The much-anticipated World Report on Disability, published by the World Bank and WHO in 2011, estimates that some 15 per cent of the world’s population, or rather some 1 billion people, are disabled people. Following the lead from earlier WHO figures, the report states that around 80 per cent of these are located in the so-called global South. Many are said to be women, the bulk living in rural areas, often in conditions of intense poverty.