People with Disabilities

People with Disabilities People with disabilities comprise 13% of the population in Latin America and the Caribbean, yet only 3% of them have access to rehabilitation services.56 People with disabilities are less likely to be employed than their peers without disabilities, with employment rates 24 and 12 percentage points lower for men and women respectively.57 On average, persons with disabilities earn lower wages and have lower skill levels due to exclusion in education and lower promotion rates.58 School attendance of children with disabilities is 7 to 13 percentage points lower than those without, depending on the education level.59 As people with disabilities are more likely to live near or under the poverty line than people without disabilities, impacts on poverty as a result of the pandemic will disproportionately affect them.60 In FY 2020, the IAF managed 18 active grants that supported people with disabilities.

Example: Peruvians with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities face barriers to living independently. IAF grantee Sociedad y Discapacidad (SODIS) has helped these marginalized citizens exercise their legal rights and access social services that improve their quality of life. SODIS has engaged people with psychosocial or intellectual disabilities, organizational representatives, and legal and medical professionals in working groups to develop rights-based proposals and approaches. SODIS developed two pilot projects in two districts of Lima to test the efficacy of a community-based support network methodology: one with people with intellectual disabilities, in collaboration with the Peruvian Down Syndrome Society, and another with people with psychosocial disabilities, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health. The SODIS pilots have helped demonstrate that support networks strongly rooted in the community can empower persons with disabilities to exercise one of the fundamental rights of an adult: to make life decisions based on free and informed consent. In 2018, when the Peruvian government sought to bring its civil code in line with multilateral conventions on the rights of persons with disabilities, it employed a proposal for support networks developed by SODIS participants. Through consistent civic engagement, SODIS took the leading role in transforming Peru’s approach to people with disabilities, from a guardianship model to supported decision-making.