Intellectual Disability and the International Day of Persons with Disabilities

Have you ever asked yourself what would happen if you were to lose some part of your intelligence?

Would those who surround you still love you as much as they do now? Would they show it in the same way?

In principle, if you are a patient person, you would still be patient. If you are an affectionate person, you would remain affectionate. An intellectual disability would deprive you of intellectual faculties, but you would still have the same qualities and faults. Only your capacities would be diminished. Unless ...

Unless the people around you begin to reject you. Unless the majority of those close to you no longer want to share daily life with you because you annoy or disturb them. Unless you start to disparage yourself because you are not like the rest of the world. In that situation, your faults might well become more conspicuous than your qualities, because you would be too sad and wounded to believe in your own value.

If a great strength does reside in the heart of people who have an intellectual disability, it is the strength of disarming simplicity. We, through our behaviour, must allow them to blossom, to fulfill their potential; otherwise, they will withdraw and we will miss the opportunity to truly know them.

Let yourself be moved by intellectual disability.



Patrice Paradis, Director
L'Arche Mauricie

Globally, almost one in ten people is a person living with a disability and recent studies indicate that persons with disabilities constitute up to 20 per cent of the population living in poverty in developing countries.

Many persons with disabilities continue to face barriers to their participation in their communities and are often forced to live on the margins of society. They often face stigma and discrimination and are routinely denied basic rights such as food, education, employment, access to health and reproductive health services.

Many persons with disabilities are also forced into institutions, a direct breach of the rights to freedom of movement and to live in their communities.

 Although it is difficult to calculate with any kind of precision the number of people affected by an intellectual disability - because in non-industrialized countries few statistics are kept on such matters - it is estimated that intellectual disabilities affect approximately two per cent of the population world-wide.

In addition, given the "greying" of the world's population, in the near future more and more people will likely be affected by an intellectual disability of one form or another.

Jean Vanier : A Man and His Vision