ABSTRACT
Disability is the umbrella term for impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions, referring to the negative aspects of the interaction between an individual and that individual's contextual factors. Humanitarianism in global neoliberal discourses and imagery connected to the fight against poverty and disability has, under the influence of rationing of care, become commodified. The earliest signs of this were in the late 1990s, with the inclusion of indicators of cost-effectiveness, evidence, and the use of Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) as measurement of disability. The primary tool used was the Financial Tracking Service (FTS) implemented by the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) which reviewed data from over 6,000 projects in the context of 14 UN Consolidated Appeal Processes (CAPs) and four Flash Appeals. This lack of inclusion reveals that new neoliberal humanitarianism is built on a commodification of disability founded on a new technological rationalism and refined medical model of disability.
