Sport is an im­por­tant so­cial di­men­sion to demon­strate gen­uine in­clu­sion for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties. Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions En­able "The UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties is the first legal­ly bind­ing in­ter­na­tion­al in­stru­ment to ad­dress the rights of per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties and sport.

Ar­ti­cle 30 of the Con­ven­tion ad­dress­es both main­stream and dis­abil­i­ty-spe­cif­ic sport and stip­u­lates that "States Par­ties shall take ap­pro­pri­ate mea­sures to en­cour­age and pro­mote the par­tic­i­pa­tion, to the fullest ex­tent pos­si­ble, of per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties in main­stream sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties at all lev­els".

It al­so calls up­on Gov­ern­ments, States par­ty to the Con­ven­tion, to en­sure that per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties have ac­cess to sport and recre­ation­al venues–as spec­ta­tors and as ac­tive par­tic­i­pants. This al­so re­quires that chil­dren with dis­abil­i­ties be in­clud­ed in phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion with­in the school sys­tem "to the fullest ex­tent pos­si­ble" and en­joy equal ac­cess to "play, recre­ation and leisure and sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties". www.un.ord/dis­abil­i­ties/de­fault.asp?id=1563

Ear­li­er this year (April 23rd-24th) Roy Mc­Cree (UWI) pre­sent­ed a pa­per en­ti­tled "Sport and dis­abil­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go: An ex­plorato­ry study," at a con­fer­ence host­ed by the Net­work and Out­reach for Dis­abil­i­ty Ed­u­ca­tion and Sen­si­ti­za­tion (NODES) and the Dis­abil­i­ty Stud­ies Unit, UWI. The theme of the con­fer­ence was "To­wards So­cial In­te­gra­tion: Rights, Roles, Recog­ni­tion of per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties."

Mc­Cree's pre­sen­ta­tion en­ti­tled point­ed out sev­er­al chal­lenges fac­ing the de­vel­op­ment of dis­abil­i­ty sport and recre­ation.

Mc Cree ar­gues that Dif­fer­ent­ly Abled Ath­letes (DI­AA's) use sport as a means of chal­leng­ing the dom­i­nance of the abled bod­ied. In oth­er words, sport pro­vides a space for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties to ex­press them­selves and show­case their abil­i­ties and tal­ents just as able bod­ied per­sons do. There­fore, DI­AA's re­quire eq­ui­ty in the ac­cess to all re­sources and the man­ner in which they are treat­ed.

How­ev­er, per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties are faced with sev­er­al ma­jor chal­lenges in gen­er­al let alone in sport and recre­ation. These in­clude:

1) The ab­sent of fa­cil­i­ties that cater thor­ough­ly for the needs of per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties who may be ath­letes, ad­min­is­tra­tors, of­fi­cials and the gen­er­al spec­ta­tors. Are the up­grades to recre­ation­al grounds in­cor­po­rat­ing the needs of per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties? What if a for­eign sport­ing team through a school and or a club were to vis­it? Will they feel at home and or dis­ad­van­taged? Sport Tourism must al­so cater for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties.

2) Fund­ing- there is no clear defin­ing pol­i­cy as it re­lates to fund­ing to ath­letes with dis­abil­i­ties. Fur­ther­more, a ques­tion should be raised as to whether or not there is any clear­ly de­fined strat­e­gy as part of the sport for de­vel­op­ment pol­i­cy that in­cludes pur­pose­ful­ly per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties?

3) Pub­lic at­ti­tudes and stereo­types- Per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties are faced with many tra­di­tion­al views and stereo­types that not on­ly mar­gin­alis­es but al­so serves to pro­vide se­vere emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal pain. Too of­ten per­sons are made to feel re­spon­si­ble for their dis­abil­i­ties.

Mc­Cree made sev­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions that can go a long way to­ward in­te­grat­ing the abled with per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties in sport. These in­clud­ed:

1) A pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign to sen­si­tise the gen­er­al pub­lic about per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties

2) In­clud­ing a course on DI­AA's as part of the Dis­abil­i­ty syl­labus at the UWI

3) Need to de­vel­op a sep­a­rate sport pol­i­cy on per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties.

4) The host­ing of a con­fer­ence on Sport and Dis­abil­i­ty to bring to the fore­front the re­search that has been con­duct­ed else­where in the world. Such a con­fer­ence can as­sist tech­nocrats and oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tors in the de­vel­op­ing of a sport pol­i­cy that is very much in­clu­sive and not ex­clu­sive to the abled. The ma­jor dis­ap­point­ment on the day of the con­fer­ence was the ab­sence of rel­e­vant per­son­nel from the Min­istry of Sport who wield pow­er on shap­ing na­tion­al sport­ing pol­i­cy. The last po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion talked a lot about the pow­er and po­ten­tial of sport but lack any prop­er strate­gic plan for de­vel­op­ing sport and sport de­vel­op­ment. There were too many ad hoc dis­con­nect­ed plans many of which the suc­cess­es can­not be ob­jec­tive­ly iden­ti­fied.

It is ex­pect­ed that Sport and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dar­ryl Smith con­sul­ta­tive ap­proach will ex­tend be­yond dis­cus­sion re­sult­ing in all sport­ing poli­cies, strate­gies and im­ple­men­ta­tion plans strate­gi­cal­ly in­clud­ing sports­women/men with dis­abil­i­ties.