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Decentralized Democracy

Lindsay Glassco

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 28, 2023
Context: Committee Evidence - SDIR-40 (SDIR) - Nov/28/23
Ms. Lindsay Glassco (President and Chief Executive Officer, Plan International Canada Inc.)
  • 11:40:01 a.m.
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Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights. I am here today with my colleague, Peter Simms, who's Plan Canada's senior education adviser. It's a true honour to be here along with our fellow witnesses to share our message of the necessity of prioritizing and investing in disability-inclusive education. Plan International Canada is part of a global federation working in 80 countries. We focus on children's rights and gender equality for girls in all their diversity. Plan delivers $200 million a year of education programming, working directly with those who are most marginalized. Across the countries where we work, we see the children with disabilities stigmatized and facing violence, abuse and maltreatment. We also see children with physical, intellectual or sensory impairments continually denied their right to education. Education systems around the world are failing children with disabilities, with disastrous consequences. We know that today around 240 million children around the world have a disability. We also know that almost the same number of children are out of school, but these are not unrelated statistics. Half of out-of-school children in the global south have a disability and the problem of out-of-school children is, to a significant extent, a problem of a lack of inclusive education. Children with disabilities face significant barriers, both in and outside of school. They are less likely to enrol in school, less likely to meet learning standards and less likely to complete any stage of education. Their absence from school also means that they miss out on school meals and they miss out on health campaigns, such as vaccine programs, and consequently they face higher health risks. In short, children with disabilities are excluded from the short- and long-term benefits of education. Their needs are clearly not being met. Plan International prioritizes the rights of women and girls in its programming. We see that gender is a significant barrier to education for children with disabilities. Even for those in school, girls with a disability are 10% less likely to finish primary school than boys with a disability. Disability intersects, exacerbates and is itself a product of wider inequalities, most notably poverty, gender discrimination and the existence of conflict or crisis. Let me tell you the story of Munira, a girl from Borno in northeastern Nigeria. One day she was walking to fetch water, like all girls do, and was hit by a car. Her leg had to be amputated, leaving her with a lifelong mobility issue. For girls like Munira, going to school was already a challenge, because she lives in a community where ongoing conflict and repeated insurgent attacks on schools are terrorizing children and making parents afraid to send them back to class. In fear, many families choose not to give their daughters an education. Not getting an education, we all know, exposes girls to greater risk of gender-based violence and early and forced marriage. The fear of Munira's parents to send their daughter to school was now compounded by the fact that their daughter had a disability. They didn't think a girl with disabilities could make use of an education, and they chose to keep her out of school. Munira discovered an accelerated learning program through an awareness session held by Plan International. She tentatively inquired whether she, a girl with one leg, could join. You can imagine that she was thrilled when the answer was a resounding yes. With Plan's support and with funding from the Canadian government, Munira returned to school, with classes tailored to fill the gaps in her education and with accessible facilities to ensure she could attend and learn. Munira's story is illustrative of the challenges girls face in crisis situations and how those challenges are multiplied for girls with disabilities. Plan International integrates disability inclusion into all of its education programming, but I have to confess that it could do so much more. Disability rarely exists independently of other vulnerabilities, including age, gender, extreme poverty, conflict and fragile contexts. Understanding the intersectional nature of disability is central to ensuring that we are able to bring about lasting change. In conclusion, Plan International recommends, like all the other witnesses here, increased investment to make sure that children with disabilities are not left behind. Investment is vital to address the needs and uphold the rights of children with disabilities. We also recommend new approaches in disability responses that are truly inclusive and address the intersectional nature of disability, including gender inequality. This involves engaging people with disabilities in defining solutions and ensuring that they are at the table. Thank you.
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Context: Committee Evidence - SDIR-40 (SDIR) - Nov/28/23
Ms. Lindsay Glassco
  • 11:54:29 a.m.
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Indeed, gender is a huge issue. Multi-country estimates show that girls with disabilities are more likely to be out of school than boys with disabilities, and they face all of these other significant barriers, some of which you referenced. One of them is health care and access to sexual and reproductive rights. There are a whole variety of other access issues they are facing in terms of health care specifically. Girls with disabilities and girls in general, as you mentioned, experience heightened rates of gender-based violence. They are also facing communication and cultural barriers, due to stigma, in reporting incidents and accessing referral services where they do exist. This is all compounded in special education institutions, where girls with disabilities are often more isolated from their support networks. There are likely to be significant ramifications for survivors, related to mental health, motivation and access to school. Even if the infrastructure is there, the barriers presented to them in terms of their ability to have access and speak out verbally, and the cultural implications, are huge, so they just don't do it. This stigma and these cultural barriers are seen at the community level. They are seen at the family level and they are seen with the parents. Parents are reluctant to send their daughters to school. Of course, when there are economic hardships or the crisis situation I spoke to earlier, these are all barriers that girls are basically confronted with daily.
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