Women with Disabilities as Agents of Peace, Change and Rights Experiences from Sri Lanka

Drawing on rich empirical work emerging from core conflict regions within the island nation of Sri Lanka, this book illustrates the critical role that women with disabilities play in post-armed conflict rebuilding and development. This pathbreaking book shows the critical role that women with disabilities play in post-armed conflict rebuilding and development. Through offering a rare yet important insight into the processes of gendered-disability advocacy activation within the post-conflict environment, it provides a unique counter narrative to the powerful images, symbols and discourses that too frequently perpetuate disabled women’s so-called need for paternalistic forms of care. Rather than being the mere recipients of aid and help, the narratives of women with disabilities reveal the generative praxis of social solidarity and cohesion, progressed via their nascent collective practices of gendered-disability advocacy. It will be of interest to academics and students working in the fields of disability studies, gender studies, post-conflict studies, peace studies and social work.

List of contributors Acknowledgements 1 Introduction: Out of the shadows: Women with disabilities as agents of peace, justice and reparations in Sri LankaKaren Soldatic and Dinesha Samararatne 2 Going beyond disability identity and creating communities of belonging: Perception management and gendered disability advocacyNiro Kandasamy and Karen Soldatic 3 Music, resistance and change: The gendered-disability performativity of a Tamil woman with multiple DisabilitiesNiro Kandasamy and Sindhu Ratnarajan 4 Raging (e)motions Niro Kandasamy and Binendri Perera 5 Women with disabilities, advocacy and the lawDinesha Samararatne 6 Learning about rights, claiming a gendered-disability identity: The role of reparations and gendered-disability justiceBinendri Perera 7 Conclusion and recommendations: Enabling women with disabilities’ advocacy and activism in the peace-building landscapeKaren Soldatic and Dinesha Samararatne

Karen Soldatic is an Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, and Institute Fellow, Institute for Culture and Society, at Western Sydney University. She was awarded a Fogarty Foundation Excellence in Education Fellowship for 2006–09, a British Academy International Fellowship in 2012, a fellowship at The Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University (2011–12), where she remains an Adjunct Fellow, and an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship (2016–19). Her research on global welfare regimes builds on her 20 years of experience as an international, national and state-based senior policy analyst, researcher and practitioner. She obtained her PhD (Distinction) in 2010 from the University of Western Australia. Dinesha Samararatne is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Public & International Law at the Faculty of Law at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. She is also a Postdoctoral Fellow in the ARC Laureate Program in Comparative Constitutional Law (2019–20), a Co-Convenor of Constitution Transformation Network (CTN) of the Melbourne Law School and co-editor of the Blog of the International Association for Constitutional Law (IACL). Her recent research has been in relation to constitution-making, methodology of comparative constitutional law, women’s rights and rights of persons with disabilities.