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Key Factors: The Dominican
Republic shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with Haiti. Of the Dominican Republic's 8.5 million people, 66 percent live in urban areas.1 High unemployment and the cost of health care create hardships for many poor, among whom people with disabilities and their families fi gure prominently.
The Disability Act, enacted in June 2000, specifi ed that: "As of the effective date of this law, the words "invalido", [invalid] "minusvalido" [crippled] or "inhabilitado," [handicapped] as used in any legal document to refer to people and their abilities, shall be replaced with "personas con discapacidad" [people with disabilities]."2
However, some disability-related publication use the word "discapacitados", translated here as "disabled," to refer to the disability community.3 Additionally, the most recent census asked about "limitación", translated here as "impairment," as well as "sordo" and "mudo" translated here as "deafness" and "muteness."4 When directly quoting legal documents in this report, the original terminology has been preserved.
The country's radio and television media outlets have begun using
appropriate words to refer to people with disabilities. This change is a result
of a social awareness campaign that was carried out in 2000 by disability
organizations.5
1. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2003: Millennium Development Goals: A compact among nations to end human poverty, (Oxford University Press, New York, 2003).
2. Law 42-2000, Discapacidad en República Dominicana [Disability Act], http://www.bvs.org.do/ docs_en_html/conadis.htm.
3. Noemí Mendez, Booklet No. 3, "Derechos de los Excluidos" [Rights of the Excluded], (brochure Padre Juan Montalvo Social Studies Center, 2001).
4. National Statistics Offi ce, Census Taker Manual, 7th National Population and Housing Census, 2002, http://www.one.gov.do.
5. "Pero le falta algo" [But something is missing], campaign sponsored by the Democratic Participation Project (PID), Pontifi cia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra and the Dominican Rehabilitation Association.