News
Peter Torres Fremlin

A familiar place

Five years of Covid, forced back to work, and curated news from 39 countries
Photograph of a young Philippine girl using a braille slate and stylus to write on paper. She looks down, concentrated, her face covered by long dark hair.
A student in the Philippines affected by Trump's cuts to foreign aid. She is using a braille stylus and pen in an inclusive education centre which had been funded by USAID. An elementary school in Batangas city, March, 2025. Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images.

Dear Debriefers,

Welcome back to another Debrief world-tour of disability news, today across nearly 40 countries.

There are reflections on five years of the covid pandemic, and some attempt to keep up with Trump (plus signposts to where you can find more).

If that's not cheery enough for you then there's some complaints about disability benefits being cut, celebration of activism by women with disabilities, and other movements in international efforts for disability rights.

Plus, a bit of football and a great awareness video. It's all in the game.

Explore the full guide with 141 links: curated across 39 countries or according to subject. This edition picks up from the update in February.

The cover photograph is from an inclusive education centre launched by USAID's Gabay project, an initiative to increase access to education for blind, deaf, and deaf-blind children. The Philippine national department of education is trying to mitigate the impact of programmes being suspended.

Peter Torres Fremlin is editor of Disability Debrief and is from the UK.

Disability Debrief is published through a pay-what-you-can model. Thanks to Morgan and Yuliia for new contributions.

Finding a familiar place in crisis

A lot of loss. The covid pandemic saw its fifth anniversary this month. In The Sick Times, Miles W. Griffis reflected on his experience of half a decade of long covid:

“Looking back on half a decade, there have been numerous milestones in Long COVID research, advocacy, and greater societal awareness, many led by people with the disease. There has also been, and continues to be, a lot of loss. There have been more than 25 million global excess deaths from COVID-19, and more than 400 million people are affected by Long COVID, which can be fatal.”

Barely trust one another. A New York Times feature looks at how Covid Remade Our America:

“We barely trust one another and are less sure that we owe our fellow Americans anything — let alone the rest of the world. The ascendant right is junking our institutions, and liberals have grown skeptical of them, too, though we can’t agree about how exactly they failed us. A growing health libertarianism insists on bodily autonomy, out of anger about pandemic mitigation and faith that personal behavior can ward off infection and death”.

A familiar place. In reflections on pandemics, polycrises, and life-long barriers, Melanie Kawano-Chiu and Dwi Ariyani share what the disability movement knows about responding to challenges:

“A handful of months into the pandemic, many disability activists found themselves in a familiar place: they bore the heavy burden of navigating additional barriers while also being the only ones calling for responses that responded to the needs and rights of persons with disabilities. This was particularly true for women with disabilities, who far too often have the role of primary caregiver added to their list of responsibilities.”

Keeping up with Trump

Some braver souls than me are keeping up with Trump. For updates on the impact of the new administration on disabled people, follow:

Some notable pieces:

One crucial difference. In an essay on how a lawsuit “Threatens the Disability Protections I’ve Known My Whole Life”, Rebekah Taussig writes:

“As with much of U.S. politics right now, Texas v Becerra feels like a reckless attempt to pull us back to a former time. But there is one crucial difference between 1977 and 2025. More than one generation of disabled children has grown up under the protections Section 504 provides us. And while the politicians are still reciting the same script, our revolutionary predecessors gave us a new story. We are a valuable part of our communities, we belong here, and we’ve been shown how to fight.”

Who needs right wing government when the left will screw us too

Sidelined. In Canada, the new leader Mark Carney discontinued the cabinet positions dedicated to people with disabilities and women and gender equality issues. Rabia Khedr, of Disability without Poverty, said people with disabilities are being “sidelined, due to the political crisis created by the U.S.A. and the imminent election.”

Back to work. Here in the UK, the Labour government is announcing reforms on working-age disability and incapacity benefits. The uptake of these benefits has grown quickly since the pandemic, and it's definitely an issue worthy of government attention. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies:

“Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant rise in the number of people getting health-related benefits. In England and Wales, 4 million 16- to 64-year-olds (1 in 10) now claim either disability or incapacity benefits, up from 2.8 million in 2019 (1 in 13).” 

Mollify the rich. But the way Labour is going about it, in the words of Frances Ryan, “mollifies the rich [and] targets disabled people”. In order to receive these benefits we had to go through Kafkaesque and downright hostile assessments, all while managing our own disabilities or health conditions. And now the government wants to snatch £5 billion out of our hands.

Without coercion. Rather than cutting supports, the government should try to support people better, not least by fixing the systems meant to get folk into work. As Kamran Mallick, of Disability Rights UK, says:

“The reality is that disabled people are ready – indeed, eager – to educate and support the government in their wish to cut the welfare bill by boosting their employment opportunities. However, that support must be offered without coercion, and in a genuinely supportive and personalised manner.”

What about trying to support people into work

There's striking news from the Netherlands, which a decade ago made an ambitious jobs agreement plan to create 125,000 jobs for persons with disabilities. Employers were given a range of supports, such as job-placement, job coaches, and subsidies (including for wages).

The goal hasn't been achieved, but 88,000 jobs were created. There is critique from employers on the bureaucratic requirements, and reports of discrimination as well as possible negative impact on those who aren't covered by the scheme. Personally I'm a bit skeptical of an initiative that makes disabled workers separate from others, but I'd love to hear from readers who know more about the pros and cons of this approach.

And in Ukraine, there is a new law to promote employment of persons with disabilities. It expands employment opportunities and anticipates supports for both employers and disabled people.

Transforming traditional patterns of activism

Growing disability-consciousness. In China, a paper by Luanjiao Hu and Ling Han profiles the growth of women-led Disabled Persons' Organisations (DPOs):

“Amid the growing disability-consciousness movement enabled by digitalisation, a new generation of female-led DPOs has been active and influential in raising disability awareness and organising communities in China. These female-led DPOs are initiated by Chinese disabled women who are based in major cities in China or living overseas. Many founders are highly educated and have been educated overseas. Their organisations aim to build communities (many specifically hope to empower disabled girls and women through targeted programming), share resources, and challenge disability and gender stigma from traditional male-led DPOs.”

Transforming traditional patterns of activism. From Women Enabled International, there's guidance for funders on becoming disability- and gender-inclusive:

“In a diverse range of countries from the Middle East, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe, organizations led by women and gender-diverse people–with and without disabilities– and individual advocates are transforming traditional patterns of activism for disability rights. They actively seek to advance rights at the intersection of gender and disability. However, despite the transformative nature of their work, organizations and activists working at the intersection of gender and disability still struggle to secure the financial resources and other forms of support they need to sustain their work.”

15 percent for the 15 percent

The Global Disability Summit is due to start in a couple of weeks – I'm looking forward to meet many Debriefers there.

One of the main outcomes of the event is endorsement of the Amman-Berlin Declaration. Its vision is making disability inclusion “a fundamental element of international cooperation”. The declaration focusses on development and humanitarian programmes and sets this target:

‘We will strive to ensure that at least 15 percent of international development programs being implemented at the country level pursue disability inclusion as an objective (“15 percent for the 15 percent”).’

In other words, to secure more of a piece of pie of international development, a pie which has gotten substantially smaller this year. Also implicit is the idea that disabled people make up 15% of the world's population, a complicated guesstimate that was updated to 16% two years ago.

Speaking of the cuts. See the statements organisations are making.

“Didn't I tell you?”

In other news...

New words, same ideas. Research on language used around disability in Swedish Print Media shows that the words change but underlying concepts remain the same.

“Didn't I tell you?”. There's a landmark judgement after a horrifying case of abuse from Moldova, written up by Validity Foundation. A woman with disability, I.C., left an institution to be “given” to a family, who kept her prisoner and abused her. The Moldovan courts dismissed the case but the European Court of Human Rights critiqued their investigation and the country's approach to deinstitutionalisation. After the judgement, I.C. herself said:

“Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I tell you that they will not get away with what they did?”

Migration. A coalition in Asia, the Disability Migration Network, is coming out with new research – I found particularly interesting the case studies of Filipinos with disabilities.

The Beautiful Game

Beautiful Game. FIFA, the global governing body for football, has launched a Disability Football Toolkit to improve participation of disabled people in all aspects of mainstream football, as well as through adapted or disability-specific modalities.

Beyond the pitch. I was intrigued to learn that, in Scotland, there has been football commentary for blind fans since 1937.

Where the decision is made

And to close, I'll leave you with CoorDown's latest high-produced and engaging awareness video: No Decision Without Us.

Which also gives us an excuse to rewatch the fantastic one they did last year, Assume that I can.

Assume that I'm signing off,

Peter

Outro

Further reading. All the links from these curated editions go into the Debrief library, which now has over 6,000 links from over 160 countries. See below for contents from this month's update.

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Recent News

This update has 141 curated links from 39 countries and regions, organized across 40 subjects.

You can explore it organized by subject or by country.

Subjects

Countries

Acknowledgements

Photograph of the schoolgirl in the Philippines by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images.

Thanks to Celestine Fraser for selecting the photograph.

And many thanks to everyone who shares links, news and reports – and the readers and organisations whose support makes this work possible.

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