Abstract

More than 1 billion people in the world lack access to clean water, and 2.6 billion to sanitation. Halving the number of people without access to water and sanitation is a Millennium Development Goal. According to a DFID research project description, 60 million physically disabled people have difficulties related to water supply, use, and sanitation. However, access to clean water and sanitation and other water related problems disabled people face are not mentioned and dealt with in high level policy documents such as the three existing editions of the world water report, the memorandum for a World Water Protocol or the Human Development Report 2007/2008 ‗Fighting climate change: human solidarity in a divided world‘ which covered water scarcity and floods. Disabled people are invisible in these documents and although all of these documents mention other marginalized groups such as indigenous peoples, women in developing countries, the rural poor and their children, young people workers/peasants‖, ‗the poor‘, farmers and displaced people. This paper submits that certain forms of ableism are responsible for the invisibility of disabled people in various water discourses