As gov­ern­ments, non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions and oth­er well-in­tend­ed per­sons and groups pro­mote glob­al in­clu­sive­ness of dis­abil­i­ties and so­cial and cul­tur­al di­ver­si­ty, sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions are al­so con­tribut­ing to­ward achiev­ing this fun­da­men­tal hu­man rights goal.

This is es­pe­cial­ly true for para-ath­let­ics, which al­lows for ath­letes with dis­abil­i­ties, in­clud­ing vi­su­al, phys­i­cal and in­tel­lec­tu­al im­pair­ments, to com­pete against one an­oth­er. The medals won by para-ath­letes con­tribute to a na­tion’s medal tal­ly in the same way as medals won by able-bod­ied ath­letes.

Para-ath­let­ics date back to 1952, when wheel­chair rac­ing was in­clud­ed in the Stoke Man­dev­ille Games or­gan­ised for World War II vet­er­ans. In 1960, wheel­chair rac­ing was one of the eight sports that were in­clud­ed in the first-ever Par­a­lympics which were held in Rome, Italy. Six­ty-two years lat­er, the Com­mon­wealth Games Foun­da­tion has tak­en up the man­tle for in­clu­siv­i­ty in sport by be­ing the on­ly ma­jor sport­ing event where the para-sports pro­gramme is ful­ly in­te­grat­ed in­to one event. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there are no oth­er sep­a­rate games sched­uled for para-ath­letes.

The Com­mon­wealth Games pro­gramme first in­clud­ed events for ath­letes with dis­abil­i­ties at the 1994 Vic­to­ria Games in Cana­da. How­ev­er, at the 2002 Com­mon­wealth Games in Man­ches­ter, para-ath­letes were ful­ly in­te­grat­ed in­to their na­tion­al teams, mak­ing this the first ful­ly in­clu­sive in­ter­na­tion­al mul­ti-sport event.

The Man­ches­ter games saw ten para events tak­ing place, with this num­ber jump­ing to 22 events at the Glas­gow 2014 games. His­to­ry was then made in Gold Coast, Aus­tralia in 2018 when a to­tal of 38 para events were held, mak­ing it the largest para-sport pro­gramme ever. At the 2018 games, swim­ming and ath­let­ics had dou­bled in size, with para-triathlon mak­ing its de­but. It was al­so at these games that the wheel­chair marathon took to the streets as part of the free road events, which re­sult­ed in the Gold Coast games reach­ing its high­est-ever sport­ing au­di­ence.

The 2022 Com­mon­wealth Games were held in Birm­ing­ham, Eng­land. The games fea­tured sev­en ful­ly in­te­grat­ed para-sports pro­grammes: swim­ming and para swim­ming, para pow­er­lift­ing, ta­ble ten­nis and para ta­ble ten­nis, 3x3 wheel­chair bas­ket­ball, ath­let­ics and para-ath­let­ics, lawn bowls and para lawn bowls, cy­cling—track and para track. Birm­ing­ham 2022 was ful­ly in­te­grat­ed in every sense of the word. It was a city that boast­ed its strengths of be­ing con­nect­ed and ac­ces­si­ble, youth­ful and in­clu­sive; and the vi­brant and di­verse city did not dis­ap­point. Birm­ing­ham’s ar­ray of ex­ist­ing sport­ing venues, sta­di­ums and halls proved to be ide­al for the host­ing of these games, which were all equipped with dis­abil­i­ty ac­cess for ath­letes and pa­trons alike.

The Na­tion­al Ex­hi­bi­tion Cen­tre host­ed para pow­er­lift­ing and para ta­ble ten­nis, the same are­na where the box­ers had their in­tense bouts, while 3x3 wheel­chair bas­ket­ball was played in the heart of the city. The Sandwell Aquat­ics Cen­tre was built for the swim­ming and para swim­ming event and the new­ly re­fur­bished Alexan­der Sta­di­um was the venue for the ever-an­tic­i­pat­ed ath­let­ics and para-ath­let­ics events.

Spec­ta­tors elec­tri­fied the sta­di­ums in bois­ter­ous sup­port, stomp­ing their feet on the stands with the same vigour when Elaine Thomp­son-Hera was sprint­ing as when De­ven­der Ku­mar threw his dis­cus with all his might.

In the Com­mon­wealth Vil­lages, there was a ca­ma­raderie that was un­matched among all ath­letes, of­fi­cials and vil­lage vol­un­teers alike. It was a priv­i­lege to wit­ness an in­com­pa­ra­ble one­ness where every­one dined to­geth­er, caught the same trans­port to gam­ing venues, trained to­geth­er, and took part in recre­ation­al ac­tiv­i­ties dur­ing down­time. To be there was to be a part of the won­der of how sport brings in­di­vid­u­als to­geth­er in an un­par­al­leled way.

The Par­a­lympics is the pre­mier sport­ing event for ath­letes with phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties. The Caribbean cur­rent­ly has 22 Olympic Com­mit­tees and 14 of these have an ac­tive Na­tion­al Par­a­lympic Com­mit­tee. The num­ber of ath­letes com­pet­ing, how­ev­er, is quite small. This is due to many fac­tors, in­clud­ing lack of ap­pro­pri­ate fa­cil­i­ties for train­ing, in­ad­e­quate sup­port per­son­nel for ath­letes with dis­abil­i­ties, in­ad­e­quate fund­ing for adap­tive equip­ment and tech­nolo­gies that will al­low these ath­letes to be com­pet­i­tive, lack of qual­i­fied coach­es for work­ing with this group, very lim­it­ed fi­nan­cial sup­port for ath­letes with dis­abil­i­ties and cul­tures that do not ful­ly sup­port in­clu­siv­i­ty.

De­spite the chal­lenges, the re­gion has se­cured 166 medals in the Sum­mer Par­a­lympics (69 gold, 41 sil­ver and 56 bronze). Most of these medals were ob­tained by Cu­ba, fol­lowed by Ja­maica. This num­ber can in­crease through the de­vel­op­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion of poli­cies that fo­cus on di­ver­si­ty, ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, and in­clu­siv­i­ty.

Ac­tion plans must in­clude de­vel­op­ing poli­cies and pro­grammes sup­port­ing ath­letes’ rights, wel­fare and tran­si­tion sup­port, as well as es­tab­lish­ing re­gion­al sports part­ner­ships with Re­gion­al Para-Sports As­so­ci­a­tions and the Unit­ed Na­tions to guar­an­tee sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the ar­eas of equal­i­ty and in­clu­sion.

Jana Edghill is a Phys­i­cal Ther­a­pist from Guyana who is pur­su­ing her mas­ters’ de­gree in Sports Med­i­cine with the UWI Fac­ul­ty of Sport.