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Peter Torres Fremlin

Why sport must be reimagined

The Paralympics 2024 and disability news from 55+ countries

Dear Debriefers,

Thanks to so many of you for welcoming my coverage of what went wrong at the International Disability Alliance. Do keep sharing feedback.

As for today, it's time to catch-up with our monthly guide to international disability news, with coverage from over 55 countries.

This edition highlights the growing coverage of the Paralympics, what it tells us about sports as well as continuities and changes in social inclusion of persons with disabilities.

Plus, we have disabled people in protests, the disability wage gap, New Zealand's “national disgrace”, and emotional support parrots.

Explore the full guide to 180+ links, organised by subject or by country.

The Debrief does this work with reader support. Thanks to Abi and Melissa for new contributions.

Before we start I wanted to share a couple of milestones.

With today's update, the Debrief's library of curated news now has over 5,100 links in it, from 160 countries.

The library is navigated according to subject or country of interest. And as you're browsing you can click through headings of countries or topics to take you to those respective areas.

You'll find plenty to discover, whether you're just curious, reviewing a particular topic, or getting acquainted with a new country. There's no other resource that will guide you to such wide-ranging news on disability.

The other milestone is the Debrief website recently had its 50,000th unique visitor since launching two years ago. Thank you!

Be inspired by our accomplishments

I come to the Games from a disability rights background. John Loeppky's Debrief piece on Paralympic Paradoxes usefully lays out some of the tensions I've always felt.

To be honest I'm still not a big watcher of the Paras (or the Olympics for the matter), but I do watch for trends in disability news. And I've been impressed by the range of coverage for this year's Games.

There is an increasing range of non-ableist coverage, a welcome alternative to the traditional narratives of “inspirational” athletes overcoming their supposedly tragic lives. Among the athletes demanding better stories was Canada's volleyballer Allison Lang: “Be inspired by our accomplishments, not by our existence.”

It was good to see more explainers introducing the Games to a wider audience. As well as a look at the need for the Paralympics to be separate from the Olympics, there were summaries of how the classification system works. A feature on Goalball calls it the “coolest sport you've never heard of”, a version of dodgeball in reverse where “players use their bodies as shields”.

China dominated the medals table, thanks to its investments and focus on results. Ukraine's success with 22 gold medals is seen as something that “shapes the consciousness” of Ukrainian society.

Zakia Khudadadi won bronze in para taekwondo, the first medal for the Refugee Paralympic team. Palestine's team had one member from Gaza, shot-putter Fadi Deeb who went to Paris to “show the people we're still here, we're still alive — we have hopes, we have dreams, we have goals”.

And at the same time there were harder questions, including in-depth exploration of what is seen as a growing problem of athletes cheating by “classification doping”. As well as straining the structure of the Games, this perception puts pressure on individual athletes. United States swimmer Raleigh Crossley, for example, faces a conundrum:

“The better she swims, the more suspicion and accusations come her way. How do you prove a disability to people who cannot see it?”

Mainstream views, segregated visions

The Games themselves were a success with the French public who turned out and watched it on TV in impressive numbers. In the Guardian's view, “a nation once indifferent to parasport is now cheering its athletes on to new levels of success”.

There was plenty of noise about accessibility in Paris, with a transformed Paralympic Village and glowing praise from the International Paralympic Committee. The results were, however, more hit-or-miss, and Henry Grabar saw Paris as “more a reminder of what hasn’t been done than what has.”

One of the most damning indictments of what hasn't changed is that the service for Olympic and Paralympic laundry was contracted to a sheltered workplace for disabled people. As noted previously on the Debrief, those campaigning for accessibility in Paris included those still segregating disabled people.

Why sport must be reimagined

The increased media coverage of the Paralympics raised wider questions about participation in sports.

David Player asked why people don't know about the Deaflympics, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in Tokyo next year. And academics Jennifer Mooradian and Dawn Trussell questioned the people left out from the Paralympics, making the case for why “sport must be (re)imagined”:

“The continued reliance on segregated sport and narrowly defined classification categories suggests ableism remains. For example, some intellectually and cognitively disabled athletes are excluded. This implies that elite competition and inclusive sport may be incompatible.”

Some countries, like Australia, used the Games as an opportunity to make discovering Para-Sport opportunities easier.

The Games also reminded many of the challenges people face in regular life. These were beautiful illustrated in Dutch cartoonist Tjeerd Royaards's Daily Paralympics. And Squeaky Wheel jokingly made these challenges into new Paralympic Sports:

“Showering while disabled is a workout, so it’s no surprise that it’s also a sporting event.”

“It will get better with time”

Outside of sports, I've been glued to the changes in Bangladesh, where popular protests overthrew longstanding Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Disabled people were among those protesting. And the violent response of security forces led to many acquiring disabilities through losing their sight. An interim government has been formed with advisors in the place of ministers. Disability groups demand a representative of people with disabilities.

Elsewhere, protestors with disabilities were also caught in crackdown on protests in Venezuela. And in Kenya, many also acquired disabilities in the protests there (see previously for context). Elizabeth Ombati writes to those who have acquired a disability. She recognises the anguish and challenges, but encourages finding a community and assures that “it will get better with time”.

Disability wage gap

New research from the International Labour Organisation exposes the disability wage gap and how persons with disabilities are being left behind in the world of work. The latest data from 65 countries shows that disabled people are more likely to be unemployed, earn less, and tend towards self-employment:

“The paper, which includes new data, finds that those with disabilities who are working are paid 12 per cent less per hour than other employees, on average, and that three-quarters of this gap – 9 per cent – cannot be explained by differences in education, age and type of work. In low and lower middle-income countries this disability wage gap is much larger, at 26 per cent, and almost half cannot be explained by socio-demographic differences.”

“The true number will never be fully known”

Here are some other news items worth highlighting.

“The true number will never be fully known.” One of the most devastating pieces in this update is from New Zealand, facing the national disgrace of hundreds of thousands victims of abuse in state care. A Royal Commission investigation came out with its final report on abuse in State and faith-based institutions between 1950 and 1999, much of which was likely faced by disabled people:

“Of the estimated 655,000 children, young people and adults in care from 1950 to 2019, it is estimated that up to 256,000 were abused and neglected. During the Inquiry period, 1950 to 1999, it is estimated around 510,000 people were in care and up to 200,000 were abused and neglected. The true number will never be fully known as records of the most vulnerable people in Aotearoa New Zealand were never created or were lost and, in some cases, destroyed.” (Abuse in Care, Royal Commission of Inquiry)

“Broken promises of disability support”. Meanwhile in present-day New Zealand cuts to disability services and downsizing of the Ministry of Disabled people are a “never-ending nightmare”. The government “won't stop attacking disabled people”.

Budget Gaps. All too-similarly, Anusha Paul's assessment of India's fiscal plan shows it failing disabled people. The allocation to implement disability rights legislation has been decreasing for years and even then, in 2022-23 for example, only a little over half of the funds were actually utilised.

The accessibility advocate who never existed. In an age of online advocacy there can be shocking impersonations. Grant Stoner's investigation reveals the plot that made up several advocates for access in gaming. Part of what's challenging is that even though they were fictional they were still part of inspiring change.

Hard for me to say I'm disabled. Tanmoy Goswami, a dear friend of the Debrief, wrote a brilliant essay viscerally describing mental health crises and his struggle with a sacred word.

“Lip reading and winging it”. In Trinidad and Tobago, Tharā Gabriel writes on the challenges she faces being hard of hearing, similar to those of her mother before her.

More from Debrief contributors (and me):

  • Illustrator Kinanty Andini did a video documentary of an access audit of health facilities in Thousand Islands, Jakarta.
  • Writer and editor Áine Kelly-Costello was featured by Disability Rights Fund and their work on the climate crisis by 350.
  • I went on the Business Disability Forum podcast to discuss disability-washing and how to tell the difference between businesses pretending to work on disability and those that are.

Emotional support parrots

To close, I leave you with the apartment owner in New York evicted for the disturbance caused by her three parrots.

The parrot-lover says the birds were emotional support animals, and assistance animals are protected by law. After taking her neighbours to court, she's been awarded $165,000 in damages. And the co-op apartment building is required to adopt a reasonable accommodation policy.

Squawk squawk,

Peter

Please share this with friends, as that's how people find the Debrief. On socials we're on Linkedin, twitter at @DisDebrief and I'm @desibility. And hit reply to say hello!

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This update has 182 curated links from 56 countries and regions, organized across 46 subjects.

You can explore it organized by subject or by country.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the readers and organisations whose support makes this work possible, and to everyone who shares links, news and reports with me.

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