Around the world up to 15 per cent of people (or one billion people) are living with disability. However this figure increases to 20 per cent amongst the poor. Once family is taken into account, one in four people in poor communities are impacted by disability.

Disability and poverty should not go hand in hand. However barriers and attitudes towards disability add to and deepen the cycle of poverty for those living with disability and their communities.

CARE’s particular focus on women and girls in our efforts to reduce poverty, as well our emphasis on building more resilient communities in the face of climate change and humanitarian emergencies, are issues which have particular significance for people with disabilities as well.

That’s why CARE Australia is striving to ensure people with disabilities actively participate in and benefit from our development and humanitarian programs.

Fast Facts:

• Around 15 per cent of the world’s population are living with disabilities, according to the UN. People living with disability are the world’s largest minority.
• Women with disabilities are recognised to be multiply disadvantaged, experiencing exclusion on account of their gender and their disability. Only 19.6 per cent of women with disability are employed, compared to 52.8 per cent of men with disability.
• Women with disability are two to three more times more likely to experience physical or sexual abuse than those without disability.

Persons living with disability

The UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) considers that “Persons with disabilities include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.”

Disability arises from not only impairments – problems in bodily functions or structures – but also from barriers present in the environment. CARE works with women and men to remove some of these barriers.

Find out more by downloading our CARE Australia Disability  Framework one-pager or the full report.

CARE Australia has now put a framework in place to achieve our goal of ensuring disability inclusion is part of all our development and humanitarian programs. This is being achieved through four key objectives:

• Ensuring all CARE staff have increased awareness of the importance of disability inclusion.
• Ensuring CARE offices have increased capacity to integrate disability inclusion into programming.
• Implementing partnerships and linkages within the countries where we work to improve the context of sensitivity of disability inclusive-action.
• Ensuring program management processes and tools include a disability perspective to support mainstreaming of disability inclusion.

To find out more about our focus on disability inclusion, download our one-pager or the full CARE Australia Disability Framework 2015 report.