Abstract:

The World Report on Disability (2011) estimates that 15 per cent of the world’s population has a disability, of whom 3 per cent has a severe disability; as many as 80 per cent of all people with disabilities live in developing countries (World Health Organization & World Bank 2011). The Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues applied this estimate to indigenous populations, claiming that the number of indigenous persons with disabilities in the world today could be approximately 54 million (2013). Thus, this “guesstimate” may not be representative for some countries where the prevalence of disability amongst indigenous peoples tends to be higher than across the non-indigenous population14 due to severe poverty, exposure to violence and social deprivation.