Performing/Informing Rights: Dance, Right to Information, and Sustainable Development for Disabled People in Sri Lanka and Nepal

内战致残致残。尽管联合国可持续发展目标承诺“不让任何一个人掉队”，尽管184个国家承诺遵守《联合国残疾人权利公约》，但在战后环境中，与冲突有关的身体残疾人士很可能经历极端贫困、社会排斥和非法歧视。事实上，战后斯里兰卡和尼泊尔的残疾人往往缺乏信心、知识、资源和途径来要求权利和福利。早些时候，由人权理事会/ gcrf资助的行动研究项目“表演赋权”采用了包容性舞蹈（残疾人和非残疾人一起表演）和人权教育的创新组合，为斯里兰卡受冲突影响最严重的两个地区——巴蒂克洛亚和贾夫纳的战争残障人士赋权。项目参与者参加了舞蹈和权利讲习班，最后在日常公共场所（公园、市场和路边）进行舞蹈表演。我们的研究表明，这些工作坊和表演帮助残疾参与者变得更加自信和自信：一些人成功申请了福利和残疾津贴，改善了他们的生活条件，提高了他们的社会地位。一些参与者还利用他们新的权利知识和舞蹈技能帮助当地社区的其他残疾人。这个后续项目，执行/告知权利，在两个重要方面扩大了早期项目的影响并增加了价值。首先，它超越了早期讲习班的一般内容，重点关注舞蹈和信息权（RTI）。RTI是确保公平、透明和负责任的政府决策的关键工具，因此被纳入联合国可持续发展目标。授权残疾人要求政府官员提供有关其福利和残疾福利申请的状态和处理情况的信息，将大大降低这些申请消失在官僚主义黑洞中的可能性。其次，后续项目扩大了早期项目的范围，在斯里兰卡（波隆纳鲁瓦）增加了一个地点，在尼泊尔（加德满都和尼泊尔冈吉）增加了两个新地点。之所以选择尼泊尔，是因为和斯里兰卡一样，它也是一个战后国家，以佛教为主，有大量因战争而致残的贫困人口，他们难以获得福利和残疾计划。斯里兰卡和尼泊尔都有强有力的RTI法律，但残疾人对这些法律知之甚少，也很少使用。这两个国家都受到新冠疫情的严重影响，生活条件恶化，残疾人福利计划中断。表演/告知权利包括四项主要活动：在斯里兰卡的巴蒂克洛亚、贾夫纳和波隆纳鲁瓦以及尼泊尔的加德满都和尼泊尔冈吉举办包容性舞蹈和RTI讲习班；在当地社区进行RTI舞蹈表演，并可能为RTI官员和专员进行表演；提交RTI申请；监测和评估项目对残疾参与者和RTI索赔的影响。这个后续项目还将产生若干产出，包括：更广泛地向弱势群体（不仅仅是残疾人）教授舞蹈和RTI的培训资源；工作坊、演出、访谈参与者的短视频；知识交流和传播活动；以及人权杂志上的练习笔记。该项目还继续在三位英国学者和VisAbility之间开展国际和跨学科（舞蹈、法律、人权）合作。VisAbility是一个由残疾和非残疾编舞家、舞者和权利倡导者组成的非营利性德国-斯里兰卡协会。为了扩大在尼泊尔的工作，这个核心小组现在将与人权研究和倡导组织倡导论坛（Advocacy Forum）和尼泊尔的苏希拉艺术学院（Sushila Arts Academy）密切合作。

Civil war maims and mutilates. People with conflict-related, physical disabilities in post-war settings are likely to experience extreme poverty, social exclusion, and illegal discrimination even though the UN Sustainable Development Goals promise to "leave no one behind" and even though 184 states have promised to comply with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Indeed, disabled people in post-war Sri Lanka and Nepal frequently lack the confidence, knowledge, resources, and access to claim rights and benefits.The earlier AHRC/GCRF-funded action research project, Performing Empowerment, used an innovative mix of inclusive dance (where disabled and non-disabled perform together) and human rights education to empower war-disabled people in Batticaloa and Jaffna, two of the most conflict-affected districts in Sri Lanka. Project participants took part in dance and rights workshops that culminated in dance performances in everyday public spaces (parks, markets, and roadsides). Our research showed that these workshops and performances helped disabled participants become more self-confident and self-assertive: several filed successful applications for welfare and disability benefits which bettered their living conditions and improved their social standing. Some participants also used their new rights knowledge and dance skills to assist other disabled people in their local communities.This follow-on project, Performing/Informing Rights, expands impact and adds value to the earlier project in two important ways. First, it goes beyond the more general content of the earlier workshops to focus on dance and the Right to Information (RTI). RTI is a critical tool for ensuring fair, transparent, and accountable government decision-making - hence its inclusion in the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Empowering disabled people to demand information from government officials about the status and processing of their applications for welfare and disability benefits will make it much less likely that those applications disappear into some bureaucratic black hole. Second, the follow-on project broadens the scope of the earlier project by adding another location in Sri Lanka (Polonnaruwa) and two new locations in Nepal (Kathmandu and Nepalgunj). Nepal was chosen because, like Sri Lanka, it is a post-war and predominantly Buddhist state with a large number of impoverished war-disabled people who have difficulty accessing welfare and disability schemes. Both Sri Lanka and Nepal have strong RTI laws but these are not much known or much used by disabled people. Both countries have been badly affected by the COVID pandemic, which has worsened living conditions and disrupted welfare schemes for disabled people. Performing/Informing Rights consists of four main activities: inclusive dance and RTI workshops in Batticaloa, Jaffna, and Polonnaruwa in Sri Lanka, and Kathmandu and Nepalgunj in Nepal; RTI dance performances in local communities and possibly for RTI officers and commissioners; filing RTI applications; and monitoring and evaluation of the project's impact on disabled participants and on RTI claiming. This follow-on project will also produce several outputs, including: a training resource for teaching dance and RTI more broadly to vulnerable groups (not just disabled people); short videos of participants in workshops, performances, and interviews; knowledge exchange and dissemination events; and a Practice Note in a human rights journal. The project also continues the international and interdisciplinary (dance, law, human rights) collaboration among three UK-based academics and VisAbility, a non-profit German-Sri Lankan association of disabled and non-disabled choreographers, dancers, and rights advocates. For the expanded work in Nepal, that core team will now work closely with Advocacy Forum, a human rights research and advocacy organization, and Sushila Arts Academy in Nepal.