Shia – Swedish Organisations´ of Persons´ with Disabilities International Development Cooperation Association

Shia’s task is to support the work which the member organisations carry out for increasing the rights for persons with disability. Shia is an abbreviation of the English terms Solidarity, Human Rights, Inclusion and Accessibility.

Respect for Human Rights

Within the Swedish disability movement there is a long tradition of working with a rights perspective. It was to demand their rights that persons with disability originally came together and established their own organisations here in Sweden. In the international development co-operation we also work from a rights perspective where our goal is to reduce poverty in all its dimensions.

Our vision is a society where all persons’ equality and rights are respected. In order to achieve this the right and opportunity of pleading one’s own case and to take control over one’s own life is decisive.

We support therefore the opportunities for people to organise themselves and to create strong organisations which can manage advocacy work successfully which will lead to the rights and needs of the members and the target group be met.

Partnership is Basic

It is the knowledge which is based on one’s own experience of disability which gives Shia its added value. We know that people who live with a similar disability understand one another despite that there are many other things which separate them. Partnership is therefore basic to our work.

Through the exchange of knowledge and experience between people with disability relations can be built which increase the long-term nature of the co-operation.