International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2019: History, Importance, and Theme of World Disabled Day

International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPWD) also known as World Disabled Day or International Day of Disabled Persons is celebrated on December 3 every year to concentrate on issues that influence individuals with disabilities around the world. IDPwD is commended to raise awareness and build up a comprehension to acknowledge individuals with disabilities by the United Nations.

The recognition of the Day expects to promote comprehension of disability issues and mobilize support for the dignity, rights, and well-being of people with disabilities in all spheres of society and improvement and to expand awareness to the situation of people with disabilities in every aspect of political, social, economic and cultural life.

International Day of Persons with Disabilities History

In 1976, the United Nations General Assembly declared the year 1981 as the International Year of Disabled Persons. This was done to start programs on regional, national, and international levels to give similar chances to disabled individuals which those with no health problems appreciate. Additionally, this planned for giving proper rehabilitation to disabled people and attempt to prevent the beginning of disability in the future.

The theme of the International Year of Disabled Persons in 1981 was “Full Participation and Equality”, characterized as the right of persons with disabilities to partake completely in the life and development of their societies, appreciate living conditions equivalent to those of different citizens, and have an equivalent share in improved conditions coming about because of socio-economic development.

Afterward, the General Assembly resolution 47/3 declared the duration between 1983 to 1992 as the United Nations Decade of Disabled Persons. This was done to lend time to the various associations and governments to actualize the activities that were prescribed during the World Programme of Action. It was in the year 1998, that the whole world began celebrating the day as the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

On October 14, 1992, as this decade drew to a nearby, the UN General Assembly broadcasted December 3 as the International Day of Disabled Persons. This day was first seen on December 3, 1992. On December 18, 2007, the assembly changed the recognition’s name from the “International Day of Disabled Persons” to the “International Day of Persons with Disabilities”. The new name was first utilized in 2008.

Since 1992, World Disabled Day is being praised to promote empathy and acknowledgment of disability issues and offer help for the self-respect, rights and better living of disabled persons. It additionally envelops the expanded awareness of benefits to be taken from the association of persons with disabilities in every aspect of political, financial, and socio-cultural life. This day centers around altogether an alternate issue every year.

The United Kingdom government (2012) announced the mandatory work for disabled persons who got welfare benefits for their improvement of lives.

Importance of World Disability Day:

Today, the world populace is more than 7 billion individuals and more than one billion individuals, or approximately 15 percent of the world populace, live with some type of disability; 80 percent live in creating nations.

Persons with disabilities, “the world’s largest minority”, have commonly poorer health, lower training accomplishments, less economic chances and higher rates of poverty than individuals without disabilities. This is to a great extent because of the absence of services accessible to them (like information and communications technology (ICT), equity or transportation) and the numerous obstacles they face in their regular daily lives. These obstacles can take a variety of forms, including those identifying with the physical environment, or those subsequent from legislation or policy, or from societal attitudes or discrimination.

Proof and experience show that when obstructions to their inclusion are evacuated and persons with disabilities are engaged to take part completely in cultural life, their whole network benefits. Obstructions looked by persons with disabilities are, along these lines, a disadvantage to society in general, and availability is important to accomplish progress and improvement for all.

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) perceives that the presence of hindrances establishes a central component of disability. Under the Convention, disability is a developing idea that “results from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.”

The United Nation’s Secretary-General António Guterres said in his message, “On this International Day, I reaffirm the commitment of the United Nations to work with people with disabilities to build a sustainable, inclusive and transformative future in which everyone, including women, men, girls and boys with disabilities, can realize their potential.”

International Day of the Persons with Disabilities 2019: Theme

The theme of 2019 is Promoting the participation of persons with disabilities and their leadership: taking an action on the 2030 Development Agenda. It centers around the strengthening of persons with disabilities for comprehensive, impartial and sustainable improvement as referenced in 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which promises to ‘leave no one behind’ and perceives disability as a cross-cutting issue, to be considered in the implementation of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy gives the establishment of sustainable and transformative progress on disability incorporation through all pillars of the work of the United Nations. Through the Strategy, the United Nations system reaffirms that the full and finish acknowledgment of the human rights of all persons with disabilities are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of every single human right and essential freedoms.