Ahmed J. Versi, Editor of The Muslim News interviews Sara Minkara, US Special Advisor on International Disability Rights (Credit: The Muslim News)
Ahmed J Versi, Doha, Qatar
Everyone must be involved in changing the narrative about disabled people, says Special Advisor on International Disability Rights at the US State Department, Sara Minkara.
The global community has begun to recognise that people with disabilities are part of the system and should at the helm of policy discussions, and Minkara says that issues like alleviating poverty and educating everyone cannot be talked about unless it involves people with disabilities.
“When we’re thinking about democracy, we need to make sure we’re inclusive, including all voices. And that includes disability,” she told The Muslim News in an exclusive interview while attending the 2022 World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) in Doha, Qatar, this month.
From the education sector to employment and health, disabled people are thought to be the largest marginalised population in the world. They are estimated to number around a billion, one-seventh of the world’s population.
Minkara, a blind, Muslim first-generation Lebanese American, was appointed as US Special Advisor on International Disability Rights at the State Department by President Joe Biden in November 2021, filling a post established under Barak Obama but which had been left vacant by Donald Trump.
“The question is the political participation of persons with disabilities. Are they at the table in policy development?” The disability rights advocate said when asked about the meaning of disability democracy.
“The most important thing is that we keep on moving towards more inclusivity and we keep going towards more, including more people with disabilities and everyone else in that process,” she insisted of the challenges faced.
During her interview, Minkara said the inclusion of people with disabilies in democracy was not linear nor binary but that each country she had travelled to had some “good practices and some challenges in different ways” about access to elections, education or running for political office.
She spoke about the significant discrimination faced and aspects of bullying in schools as well as the immense challenges that are faced, including election access for minorities, especially for the African American communities in the US, where disability makes it worse.
Regarding the Paralympics making a vast difference, she said she thought it had “normalised how disability and sports should be expected, how it should be seen, acknowledged, celebrated, and valued.”
Across the Middle East and conflict-ridden countries elsewhere, the average percentage of the disability community was much more disproportionately worse and higher than the 15 per cent experienced in the US.
As a hijab-wearing blind Muslim female, Minkara believes that her role gives confidence to other women in other countries, saying that when she goes to regions like Central Asia or South Asia, it has been “an amazing, bridge-building trust.”
Concerning her appointment, she thought her appointment by President Biden had to do with his commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility and had brought in people from very diverse backgrounds that brought in different experiences and could account for the new perspectives that he was looking for.
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