Building an inclusive world, free from stigma
UNICEF’s work with children with disabilities
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Globally, around 1 in 10 of all children live with a disability. There are an estimated 5 million children living with a disability in China.
Children with disabilities should enjoy all the fundamental rights to the best possible start in life. However, children with disabilities face obstacles to realizing these rights.
The word ‘disability’ refers to a combination of an impairment – which might be physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory – and its interaction with the environment which limits the participation of individuals in society.
Conditions leading to disability can be visible or invisible; temporary or long-term; static, episodic, or degenerating; painful or inconsequential.
The barriers that hinder children with disabilities can be functional barriers, such as a lack of accessible facilities. But often the primary barrier that children with disabilities face are to do with attitudes and social norms, such as stigma, condescension, or pity.
Children with disabilities are not a homogeneous group. They have different functional needs, and their experiences depend on these needs, the barriers they face and the availability of tailored support. The consequences of exclusion can be further aggravated by other risks, such as poverty, or discrimination based on gender, sex, religion or ethnic group, to name a few.
Globally, children with disabilities are:
- More likely to be exposed to violence, in different forms.
- More likely to miss out on early childhood education, and all other levels of schooling. They are 49 per cent more likely to have never attended school.
- Facing higher risks of getting communicable diseases, lower chances of benefiting from life-saving measures, and they are facing poorer health outcomes.
- More likely to experience poverty, and more types of deprivations.1
UNICEF China is working with government partners to:
- Challenge stigma and attitudes around children with disabilities, such as the idea that children with disabilities need pity, or they need to be ‘fixed’.
- Work towards inclusive education that meets the diverse needs of every child, including children with disabilities and children with special social emotional needs.
- Prevent all forms of violence against children with disabilities at home, online, in school, and in society, and ensure that children can be taken care of by their families.
- Collect data that reflects the situation and needs of children with disabilities, to inform policymaking.
- Listen to children with disabilities, to give them a say in the decisions that are most important to them.
Disability inclusion is essential for upholding human rights and child rights, sustainable development, and peace and security. Leaving no one behind is also central to the promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The commitment to realizing the rights of persons with disabilities is not only a matter of justice; it is an investment in a common future.
1 UNICEF Fact Sheet: Children with Disabilities, August, 2022.
