“There is no such thing as disability in the world of art,” said Soomi Jeon, Director of the Vichae Art Museum.

“We often think the persons with disabilities are the receivers of charity, and we are the givers,” she explained. “This belief actually divides us. It is not sharing. I planned this exhibition to break that common misconception.”

Breaking misconceptions

One of the featured artists is Hansol Kwon, who uses bold lines and dots in vivid colours to express himself.

His mother, Kyunghee Kim, recalled that Hansol, who lives with autism, started painting with colours, then he would cover them over in black.

“The black disappeared, and pretty colours reappeared,” she said. “I witnessed how he blossomed in his paintings. When I look at my son’s paintings since his younger years, I am able to see his growth and psychological development.”

The prestigious venue, one of the Republic of Korea’s leading arts institutions, first exhibited the works of artists with developmental disabilities in 2020. Hansol was among the 43 artists who collectively contributed more than 100 different paintings in 2022.

Beyond the art world

The significance reverberates far beyond the art world. The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that 15 per cent of the global population, or about one billion people, have a disability.

Reena Lee, the former Secretary-General of the Korean Disability Forum, noted that despite the strong representation, such persons are often hidden. This means one in seven people around me must have a disability, she said.

“In my school classroom, in my neighbourhood and in the workplace, is there one person with disabilities out of seven people I know? No, there isn’t,” she said. “Just for the comfort of the majority and economic benefit, society decided to separate persons with disabilities from those without them.”

Autistic artists are featured in periodic exhibits at the Seoul Art Centre in the Republic of Korea.

Promoting dignity

The exhibition offers an invaluable opportunity to raise visibility and promote dignity in tangible ways, Ms. Jeon said.

“People think that the exhibitions of the artists with disabilities are just free events, but these proud artists gave their imagination to us with so much sweat and passion, so in fact, it is only right to pay to see their work and establish it as a commercial exhibition,” she said. “That way, they can become financially independent someday.”

In her view, persons with disabilities should never be viewed as an economic drain.

“Breaking those misunderstandings is one of the important goals of this exhibition,” she added.

Artworks in their own right

Visitors to the exhibition shared that observation. Yunhee Park said she had visited to admire the artworks in their own right.

“If our society is open and ready to accept them, then we would be able to provide many opportunities for persons without disabilities to contribute with their amazing talents,” she said. “It will also be beneficial to persons without disabilities, and I hope more opportunities like this one can be made available.”

Visitors take in an art show in Seoul, Republic of Korea.

Equality promotes stability

Equality promotes stability, said Yejin Ha, who works as a programme officer at UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

“Throughout history, social exclusion and social injustices and inequality – they all lead to conflict and social discord,” she said. “In order to prevent conflict, it is absolutely critical to make sure that everybody is included in these efforts to build an harmonious and just society.”

‘Receive their uniqueness’

Humanity is more than transactional; it can generate mutually beneficially synergies among those with disabilities and others in society, said Myunghee Kim, who is the mother of featured artist Hyeshin Park.

“All we have to do is foster a natural exchange,” she said. “We could share the health we have and receive the uniqueness they have. It will make such a wonderful world.”

“Today and every day, let us fully recognize the active and diverse contributions of persons with autism to our societies,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said. “Let us work together with persons with autism to build an inclusive and accessible world for all.”

‘We must do better’

Despite important progress, he said, persons with autism continue to face social and environmental barriers to the full exercise of their rights and fundamental freedoms, in line with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

“We must do better, by promoting inclusive education, equal employment opportunities, self-determination, and an environment where every person is respected,” he said.

“As we do so, we also recognize the role of families, caregivers, and support networks in the lives of persons with autism.”

Global event

A UN-hosted global virtual event, Transformation: Toward a Neuro-Inclusive World for All, will feature autistic people from around the world discussing how the transformation in the narrative around neurodiversity can continue to be furthered in order to overcome barriers and improve the lives of autistic people.

The event will also address the contributions that autistic people make – and can make – to society, and to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The event, to be held on Sunday, can be streamed here.

Manfred Profazi, who is based in Vienna, Austria, has been touring some of the regions in Ukraine which have been most seriously affected by over 13 months of conflict following Russia’s full-scale invasion.

He has told UN News what he’s been seeing across the devastated country and how IOM has provided comfort to people forced to flee their homes due to the fighting and bombardment of civilian areas.

“Travelling in Ukraine these days isn’t easy. When I served as Chief of Mission for the International Organization for Migration from 2012 to 2017, it was possible to fly, or take one of the modern trains across the length and breadth of this vast country.

Now flying is completely impossible, and travel by train still fraught.

My journey this week in Ukraine, from Odesa and Mykolaiv in the south, Dnipro in the east, up to the capital Kyiv and again west to Lviv, was, for security reasons, by road.

It gave me ample time to reflect on the millions of Ukrainians that have taken the same roads to escape the danger and destruction since the start of the war.

Millions of people are in a state of flux, caught between being displaced in their own land, or with their families torn apart. Some stay in Ukraine because they cannot afford to leave, for some because leaving is simply not an option

Over 8 million Ukrainians have fled the country, another 5.3 million are internally displaced. Many people have been displaced several times. Some have travelled abroad, come back, settled, and left again as the frontline changes.

This feeling of dislocation even affects communities and people that have not relocated. Communities have been crushed, unsettled, scattered. The damage in places like Mykolaiv, and countless small towns and villages I passed through this week, scars the landscape and the emotions.

Mykolaiv has been under daily shelling for more than 250 days. Water pipes have been heavily hit. We see people queueing up for drinking water at public distribution points, some of them established by IOM, as we pass through the city. 

Rising from the rubble

The living conditions are very hard for locals and internally displaced people alike. And yet, people stay. People are returning. More than 5.6 million. People are adapting to being in new host communities, and are bringing their skills and their experience to help rebuild their new home.

Of course, rebuilding and reconstruction in the middle of a war is challenging, to put it mildly, but everywhere I went, I saw new infrastructure rising from the rubble. Much of it, I am proud and humbled to say, has been installed by IOM and by organizations working with us, and with local authorities, who have done so much to keep hope alive.

One of many examples is a mobile heating plant, essentially the hangar of a 40-tonne truck, specially adapted to provide heat to a children’s hospital, where hundreds of children – local and displaced – can receive uninterrupted treatment. Blackouts caused by the shelling brought the heating system down, and for several days, the young patients stayed in freezing conditions.

IOM Regional Director Manfred Profazi talks to Valeria about her life as a resident in an IOM-supported dormitory in Dnipro.

I was lucky enough to be able to hear first-person accounts of survival, of resilience, and even optimism from young and old alike. These stories, and the dedication of our staff, keep all of us motivated and focussed on our assistance, and on facilitating recovering without fostering dependency.

Looking back, I’m thinking of Valeriia and her son, who fled the destruction of Bakhmut and are now finally in decent accommodations, thanks to IOM-organized repair works to a dormitory in Dnipro.

She showed me photos of her home, now completely destroyed, and spoke wistfully of her market garden. Now she grows a few greens in a window box. Her son, a diligent student, follows his lessons on a mobile phone, as he doesn’t even have a laptop. They have not given up; they do whatever it takes to retain a simulacrum of normal life.

IOM’s integrated approach allows us to support displaced people and host communities on multiple levels and provide them with a full range of services from infrastructure to income-generation.

We will continue our efforts to support them as long as needed in all the ways we can.”

Read more here, about the work of IOM in Ukraine.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is stepping up efforts to help displaced and war-affected people cope with cold weather.

Children in conflict zones must be protected, not punished, said the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, together with Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, UN Special Rapporteur on the protection and promotion of human rights while countering terrorism, in a joint statement.

“It is now time to bring them home,” they said. “Many children are now entering their fifth year of detention in northeast Syria, since they were detained by the de facto authorities following the fall of Baghouz in early 2019.”

They called on all actors to ensure the immediate safety and protection of all children, regardless of their location in northeastern Syria to prevent them from suffering further harm.

States have an obligation to protect vulnerable children from abuse and possible violations of their right to life, as recognized by the Committee on the Rights of the Child.

Victims of terrorism

“Their best interests as extremely vulnerable children must be reinstated as a guiding principle together with their primary status as victims of terrorism and as children in need of special protection under international law,” they said.

Al-Hol and Roj are the two largest locked camps for women, girls, and young boys, holding about 56,000 individuals, including 37,000 foreign nationals. Over half of the population in the camps are children, of which 80 per cent are under the age of 12 and 30 per cent under five.

There are also over 850 boys deprived of their liberty in prisons and other detention centres, including supposed rehabilitation centres, throughout northeast Syria.

Egregious rights violations

The mass detention of children for what their parents may have done is an egregious violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits all forms of discrimination and punishment of a child based on the status, activities, expressed opinions, or beliefs of their parents, the experts said.

“These children are detained without any legal basis, judicial authorization, review, control, or oversight, in violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which affirms no child shall be deprived of liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily,” they said.

‘No place for children’

Most children have known nothing but conflict and closed camps, where the life conditions amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and pose an imminent risk to their lives, physical and mental integrity, and development.

“These squalid camps are no place for children to live with dignity,” the experts said. “They lack access to the most basic needs such as medical treatment and health services, food, water, and education.”

Protection, not punishment

Amid a deteriorating security situation, the experts said all children in this conflict zone deserve to be protected, not punished.

“These children are victims of terrorism and of very serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, and must be treated with dignity in all contexts, whether armed conflict or terrorism,” the experts said. “Safe return to their home countries, in accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, is the only solution and must be prioritized.

“States must urgently repatriate children, together with their mothers – a solution that we now know is eminently feasible,” they said. “We note that it is of the utmost importance that comprehensive rehabilitation programmes are in place when children are repatriated.”

About Special Rapporteurs

Special Rapporteurs are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, which is based in Geneva. These independent experts are mandated to monitor and report on specific thematic issues or country situations. They are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work.