Resilience … Just for the Resilient?

Abstract

I am a specialist on disasters and development who happens to be disabled. I have no professional experience in working specifically with disability issues. This sometimes confuses people I meet in the field who, when seeing me in my wheelchair, assume that I must be working within the disability “sector.” However, as a result of not being a disability specialist, I am able to stay out of what I fear is a sectoral bubble of people working specifically with disability issues and thus have a fairly clear view of how the other 99 percent of development professionals operate. The people I work with are not forced to apply a disability perspective—and in the vast majority of cases, they do not. I therefore have excellent opportunities to observe gaps in discussions of inclusion, as the people with whom I work, for the most part do not feel pressured to address these gaps. These observations are both enlightening and disheartening.