Global-Report-Living-Colour-dr2-2

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Inclusive Communities = Stronger Communities
GLOBAL REPORT ON ARTICLE 19: THE RIGHT TO LIVE AND BE INCLUDED IN THE COMMUNITY
A History of Exclusion
Throughout history people with disabilities have been
excluded, persecuted, feared and discriminated against
because of their disability. “In ancient Sparta, children with
physical differences were thought to represent the displeasure
of the gods and many were left on hillside cliffs to die or were
thrown off mountains. In ancient Rome, they were drowned in
the Tiber.” 1
In the mid-nineteenth century industrialized countries
began to build institutions, asylums and other large
residential facilities to house, “treat” and “protect” people
with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities. Later the
eugenics movement which originated in England and
spread to Europe, North America and other parts of the
world, influenced societies’ perceptions of people with
disabilities as defective and promoted the idea that the
quality of the human race would be improved by
preventing people with disabilities from existing. The
result was the labeling and segregating of people with
disabilities from society.
From the 1920s until the 1980s in economically developed
countries institutions were the predominant form of public
support for people with an intellectual disabilities. The
story of, and the role played by, institutions in the lives of
people with intellectual disabilities and their families varies
greatly across countries and cultures. While the majority of
people with intellectual disabilities have always lived with
family, in many countries throughout the world institutions
are/were used as a primary residential response to
situations where individuals could no longer reside with
family. Indeed in many countries, particularly in North
America, Europe, and the former Soviet Union, institutional
placement became the accepted response and indicated
course of action upon the birth of a child with an
intellectual disabilities.