Disability and the League of Nations: The Crippled Child's Bill of Rights and a Call for an International Bureau of Information, 1931
Disability & Society, 2013
Posted: 14 May 2016
Date Written: March 25, 2014
Abstract
In Disability Studies the evolution of conceptual models is often portrayed as linear, with a nineteenth-century charity model shifting to the medical model that dominated disability discourse in the twentieth century. This is then assumed to be largely unchallenged until the 1970s, when an emergent Disability Rights Movement re-framed issues into the social model, from which evolved a rights-based model. This paper documents two early efforts to address disability issues submitted to the League of Nations: the Crippled Child’s Bill of Rights in 1931 and a ‘Memorial’ requesting the establishment of an International Bureau of Information on Crippled Children in 1929. Neither submission achieved its stated goals, yet both reflect early attempts to place disability within wider social contexts.
Keywords: UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, League of Nations, social model, conceptual models, history of disability
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