Atlas - Servicio de Información sobre Discapacidad

foreword
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Montreal WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Mental Health
published an Atlas on Global Resources for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities (Atlas-ID) in 2007. This project was conducted
between 2005 and 2007 by the West Montreal and Lisette-Dupras readaptation centres for persons with intellectual disabilities.
An Atlas relating specifcally to resources and services offered in the feld of intellectual disabilities (ID) was deemed necessary by the
WHO to acquire an overview of the situation in specifc countries, as well as to improve the body of knowledge and awareness on
the global and regional disparities in services and resources for persons with ID. The Atlas-ID includes information from 147 countries,
representing 95% of the world population, and numerous explanatory graphs and tables, as well as call for actions.
The Atlas thus represents a valuable '' snapshot'' of the national services and resources available to the persons with intellectual
disabilities and their families. It is also an ID research milestone, in that it establishes the feasibility of a worldwide research study on
intellectual disabilities.
The Atlas-ID was launched during the Second International Conference on Intellectual Disabilities, held in Bangkok in November 2007.
In 2008, the CRDI Gabrielle-Major (CRDI GM), the Centre de réadaptation Lisette-Dupras (CRLD), the West Montreal
Readaptation Centre (WMRC), in collaboration with the Montreal WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Mental
Health, produced a French and a plain-language, or adapted, version of the WHO Atlas-ID report. Plain language version of the
Atlas-ID were produced in three languages: French, English and Spanish. The Project Atlas-ID still had one last contribution to
offer: The complete listing of all the Internet (Web) sources consulted during the WHO Atlas-ID project. These sources are not
comprehensive by any means, but nonetheless constitute a starting point towards building a network of international resources in
intellectual disabilities.
The WHO Atlas-ID report amounts to a call for the mobilization of resources and for greater respect of the basic individual rights
of persons with intellectual disabilities at the national and international level. With this in mind, this compendium of national
and international intellectual disabilities resources represents Project Atlas-ID’s fnal contribution towards narrowing international
disparities in services and resources across the globe. We, the editors, hope that it will prove useful to those who continue to fght
for the rights of individuals with intellectual disabilities and their families.
Jocelin Lecomte Céline Mercier
AtlAs-id | compendium who AtlAs-id of | sources used 5