Protecting the Rights of Children with Disabilities

March 2, 2023

Protecting the Rights of Children with Disabilities

Event Series: Children in a World of Challenges Workshop Series

A group of boys in a classroom in Tonga clapping

There are nearly 240 million children with disabilities throughout the world. Like all children, children with disabilities have the right to receive responsive care and education, adequate nutrition, and social protection, and to participate meaningfully in all aspects of community life. However, these rights are often denied because of stigma, lack of accessible services, institutionalization, and physical barriers. The panel discussed the research related to children with disabilities, services that are provided to young children and their families, and the status of the International Children with Disabilities Protection Act.

This event was co-sponsored by the Center for Child and Human Development; Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching and Service; Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues; Walsh School of Foreign Service; Global Human Development Program; Global Health Institute; Program on Disability Studies; and Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics. It is part of the Children in a World of Challenges Workshop series.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Participants

Toby Long

Toby Long is a professor in the Department of Pediatrics and director of professional development at the Center for Child and Human Development at Georgetown University, where she is also a faculty member with the Minor in Education, Inquiry, and Justice and Minor in Disability Studies. She is the author of over 60 peer-reviewed publications and the recipient of a variety of prestigious awards. Dr. Long collaborates with colleagues on serving infants and toddlers with disabilities and delays using evidenced-based practices throughout Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Gulf region, and Asia.

Priscila Rodríguez Benavides

Priscila Rodríguez Benavides is the associate director for advocacy at Disability Rights International (DRI). Rodríguez Benavides has served as a human rights officer and mental health specialist for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and as an expert on sexual and reproductive rights and disability for the United Nations Population Fund. She has led DRI’s legal work in the Americas before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and has filed groundbreaking cases on the rights of people with disabilities in the region.

Claire Tebbutt

Claire Tebbutt (SFS’22) is a senior in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where she is majoring in culture and politics and minoring in disability studies. At Georgetown she was on the board for the Arkansas Angels Organization for Children with Disabilities and interned in the U.S. Senate. She is the Arkansas chair for the Georgetown Admissions Ambassadors Program, and a member of the French and European Clubs. She is writing a senior honors thesis on the effects of foreign aid on the deinstitutionalization of children with disabilities in Bulgaria.

Claire Trevithick

Claire Trevithick (H’22) is a senior in the School of Health at Georgetown University, majoring in human science and minoring in disability studies. She is a member of Georgetown's varsity swim and dive team. Over the summer of 2022, Claire spent six weeks in Florence, Italy, studying abroad at Georgetown's Villa le Balze. While there, she took a class on the microbiology of Tuscan food and another on the global comparison of children with disabilities. She is now completing her senior capstone studying the effects of adverse childhood experiences on adults in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.

Clare Westerman

Clare Westerman (H’22) is a senior in the School of Health at Georgetown University, majoring in global health and minoring in disability studies. Clare conducts disability research at the Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development and is an EMT. Clare’s research on the situation of Syrian refugee children with disabilities has resulted in multiple presentations at Georgetown University. She is the co-author on an article, “Children With Disabilities Attending Montessori Programs in the United States,” recently published in the Journal of Montessori Research.