Unchaining Disability Law: Global Considerations, Limitations and Possibilities in the Global South and East

Karen Soldatić,Shaun Grech

doi:10.1017/aju.2022.11

Abstract

Pons, Lord, and Stein's article entitled “Disability, Human Rights Violations, and Crimes Against Humanity,” offers a timely and comprehensive analysis of the necessity to legally frame and approach crimes against persons with disabilities across the globe as crimes against humanity (CAH). National public inquiries examining the systematic violations against persons with disabilities repeatedly demonstrate how, despite efforts to report such heinous crimes, these violations remain largely ignored and nearly always unprosecuted. In the Global South and East, violations may be accentuated as complex historical, economic, (geo)political, cultural, ideological, spiritual, and even religious beliefs come into play alongside shifting landscapes of civil unrest, war, and state militarization. Within such contexts, legal measures for the protection of persons with disabilities, particularly for minority communities, meet extraordinary barriers. In this essay, we identify a number of core issues that constrain the possibilities of investigation and prosecution of CAH committed against persons with disabilities living in the Global South and East. Even though such laws are largely grounded in practices and institutions of the Global North, this essay emphasizes the need to ensure that accountability efforts for CAH perpetrated against persons with disability are rigorous in their design, robust in their application, and recognize the heterogeneity of persons with disability on a global scale.

Highlights

Pons, Lord, and Stein’s article entitled “Disability, Human Rights Violations, and Crimes Against Humanity,”[1] offers a timely and comprehensive analysis of the necessity to legally frame and approach crimes against persons with disabilities across the globe as crimes against humanity (CAH)
In the Global South and East, violations may be accentuated as complex historical, economic,political, cultural, ideological, spiritual, and even religious beliefs come into play alongside shifting landscapes of civil unrest, war, and state militarization
We identify a number of core issues that constrain the possibilities of investigation and prosecution of CAH committed against persons with disabilities living in the Global South and East

Summary

Geographies of Violence and Implications for Disability CAH

Feminist geographers have been at the forefront of identifying marginalized communities’ unique vulnerabilities to violence. In line with feminist geographers, the important dimensions of place and space can be scaled, from micro forms of violence in everyday life through to structural relations of global power This relational understanding of place, space, disability, and CAH has particular resonance for persons with disabilities within the Global South and Global East, due to the positionality of bodies, peoples, communities, their relationship to the nation state, and broader geopolitics.[13]. Women experience additional stigma where gendered acts of violence result in debilitating conditions, impairment and/or markings on the body as a targeted act in civil unrest and war Disability in such instances becomes more than a personal historical memory; it outwardly identifies women with disability with the minority group to which they belonged. The unique layering of disability location and contextualization are critical concerns on a global scale and warrant rigorous investigation to ensure just and fair prosecution and reparations

Educating the Legal Profession

Concluding Thoughts