Peace, Disability, and the Violence of the Built Environment

Abstract

“In all wars and disasters people with disabilities are treated as the bottom of the pile. They are the first to die; the first to contract disease and infection; and the last to receive resources and medicines when they are handed out... not only is disability caused by conflict, but conflict and displacement exacerbate existing barriers and challenges experienced by those already affected by disability, such as access to security, information, aid, and other basic needs.” So states Roberta L. Francis in her 2019 article, “Searching for the Voice of People with Disabilities in Peace and Conflict Research and Practice.” Peace studies as a field is intrinsically tied together with disability discourse, a fact sadly unheeded in the vast majority of peace studies literature (with acknowledgement to Peace Studies’ special issue on disabilities (vol. 31 iss. 4) also published in 2019. As Wolbring notes, “disabled people highlight one particular factor in peace and conflict that is omnipresent... conflict based on divergent ability expectations (2011).” Therefore, this article seeks to add to the emerging interplay between peace and disability studies by looking at the ethics of the built environment as a shared medium highlighting the natural connections between the fields. Breaking Francis’ statement into discrete parts, each definition can offer insight into how disability studies and peace studies might begin to coalesce. To begin, how are we to understand the group of people that Francis categorizes as “people with disabilities?” Various fields use a diverse array of definitions to mark boundaries between who is disabled and who isn’t, with broad groupings dividing into a number of divergent