top of page

What’s in a name?

Writer's picture: Chavia AliChavia Ali

In June, I had the privilege and joy of attending the 15th International Disability Summer School in Galway, Ireland. Since 2006, the Summer School is organised by the University of Galway’s Centre for Disability Law and Policy. Each year, the five-day event has focused on different topics of disability law, policy and practice. Involving not only legal experts but also policy-makers and practitioners in various fields of disability work makes the Galway Summer School especially valuable and relevant. Past topics have ranged from issues such as conflict, crisis and climate change, to the access for persons with disabilities to culture, recreation, leisure and sport.

This year, the theme for the Summer School was disability and gender justice, with many important presentations. Having worked on issues concerning refugees with disabilities myself, I was especially interested to learn more about the way that the asylum reception system, disability and gender intersect in the Irish context. Ireland has had a so-called direct provision system (similar to Sweden), where asylum-seekers live in privately owned accommodation centres, that are profitable to owners but tend to offer poor living conditions and inadequate access to legal advice, counselling, and the various forms of support that are vital for women with disabilities. Consistent assessments of vulnerabilities for asylum-seekers with different forms of disabilities are lacking. Neither policy nor practice adequately consider risks and vulnerabilities of women with disabilities, including those related to gender-based violence. In 2021, the Irish government committed to phasing out the direct provision system by 2024, but the process appears to have been delayed.

Among the different presentations, I also appreciated one on the remarkably slow progress made in integrating international instruments and mechanisms for disability rights and women’s rights, which is important for issues of intersecting disadvantage or discrimination. While women and girls with disabilities are explicitly mentioned in article 6 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), only mentions disability in two of its General Recommendations.

Visiting Galway was inspiring. I had heard so much both about the University and the town, and really enjoyed seeing the historical centre, admiring unique woven and knitted clothes made from local wool, or going for a stroll down by the sea. The food was tasty and people were friendly. But the Galway Summer School was above all an amazing opportunity to meet in-real-life with passionate disability experts and activists who had come from all over the world to attend. After sessions and in the breaks, we had lively discussions not only about law, but about our lives and the different places we came from. During one of those discussions, I sat in a group with a lovely man from Sierra Leone called Abu Bakr.

In Syria, this is a typically Muslim name, so I assumed that Abu Bakr was Muslim. But it turned out that he was Christian. Curious to know more, I asked him about it. He explained that in Sierra Leone, Abu Bakr is just a common name, that is not perceived as Muslim or Christian, and there was no special story in his family to explain why his parents had chosen this particular name. Abu Bakr did know someone called Omar, whose Christian father had chosen that name for his son because his best friend was a Muslim called Omar. But it seems that in Sierra Leone, Omar is also just a popular name with no special connotations associated with religion. This reminded me of an Egyptian I once knew, called Fadi, who had been equally surprised to learn that in Syria the name Fadi is not associated with any religion, while in Egypt it is a typically Christian name. I asked one of the Irish participants in our group if people in Ireland identified a person’s religion from their names. He said yes, in Ireland people would indeed make assumptions about a person’s religion based on their name, and that there were some Protestant or Catholic parents who would not choose certain names, due to the conflicts and history.

In my home town of Kobani, many Muslims in fact have Christian names - especially Armenian ones, since we have a large Armenian community. People name their children after good friends and neighbours, regardless of religion, and in the Kurdish “krîv” tradition, it is usual to have a Christian godfather for your son. Names are not only associated with religions, they can also be associated with nationalities or gender. My own name is Chavia Omar Ali, so when booking visits, transport or accommodation for instance, I often get replies addressed to “Dear Omar” or “Mr Ali”. Once, when I ordered a taxi, the driver asked me if I was Kurdish, and when I told him that I was, he said: “Your name is capable of uniting all of Iraq – Kurds, Sunnis, and Shia”. This is because in Iraq, Ali is considered to be a typically Shia name, while Omar is considered typically Sunni. In my case, people making any assumptions based on my name would additionally not realise that a large part of my personal background is instead actually Catholic, because I spent my early years in a Spanish hospital managed by Catholic nuns.

Making assumptions when we meet a new person is perhaps only human. We combine any exterior clues - such as appearance, names or accent - with information from past experiences, and start to guess and draw conclusions. But supposedly innocent assumptions can also mask prejudice, or a basic lack of interest in getting to know the person in front of us. If there is one thing I have learned on a personal level from these wonderful days in Galway and all the interesting discussions there, it is to be even more aware of the assumptions I make in my own daily life. No matter how obvious something seems, no matter how much experience I have, or how well I think I know someone, at the end of the day I don’t know what challenges other people are going through in their lives, or what their life circumstances actually are. So, from now on I will be reminding myself (once more) not to take anything for granted, and to do my best to approach every situation with an open mind.

Especially when it comes to disability, basing our actions on mere assumptions is not only careless - it can be hurtful or even dangerous. Several of the speakers at the Galway Summer School talked about mental health and conditions that are not immediately visible, such as trauma, or the impacts on mental health of peri-menopause. In my next blog I will therefore share some experiences and reflections on problematic assumptions that are sometimes made concerning different kinds of disability.


Hasta luego  ☘️ ☘️ ☘️

Chavia Ali

#chaviaali




92 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comentarios


bottom of page