Ours is an unjust country

2019, October 13 – Amalfi Beach
Swimming in the seas of the globe, for a world without barriers and without borders
XVI stage, from Massa Lubrense to Amalfi via Positano and Praiano

Reducing inequalities and enhancing social justice does not mean everyone becomes equal, but it does mean having the freedom to be different.

Our country ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2009. However, even today, both in politics and in public opinion, the concept remains that people who have any limitation go before anything else protected and guarded, cared for and assisted, rather than valued and supported in their aptitudes and abilities.

Ours is an unjust country. the right to self-determination and inclusion enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is not yet fully recognized and adequately supported.

Ours is an unjust country. The data on the inequality of income, wealth, access to basic services and in general economic and social inequalities make this perception irrefutable in the common sense.

Ours is an unjust country. It is a fact that some rare diseases are not included in the civil disability tables although they are instead included among the pathologies that are exempt from participation in the cost of related outpatient specialist services.

Ours is an unjust country. Those who live with a disability are often an isolated person, not socially integrated, who must struggle daily to assert minimum rights.

Ours is an unjust country. When those living with a disability suffer discrimination they tend to withdraw further, disheartened towards the social and judicial system. And the new isolation predisposes even more to discrimination: the circle often closes in silence. In this sense, prevention becomes fundamental, which passes (only) through education, respect and recognition of rights, work with young people and in schools, with public opinion and civil society, in all places where it becomes community and social aggregation.

For people with disabilities and their families, in order to overcome the multiple criticalities and break down all types of barriers, an adequately funded Law on the equalization of accidents in life with accidents at work is urgently needed, which establishes and supports the right to independent life. (Click here).

Salbatore Cimmino