Taking Care of Disabled Children: the Centre International de l’Enfance and Transnational Network, France-North Atlantic-Africa (1959-1989)

By exploring the intersection between disability and childhood issues from a diachronic perspective, this project aims to demonstrate how disability gradually became, between the 1960s and 1980s, a key global issue that must be taken into account in any health and advocacy perspective targeting children.

In order to respond to this general objective and thus fill a historical silence, the project studies the Centre international de l'enfance - CIE’s consideration of the needs of children with disabilities by identifying its role and measuring its influence within transnational networks.

Created in 1949 by the French paediatrician Robert Debré, the CIE emerged as a major player in the transnational space of advocating for children, playing a complementary role to UNICEF.This project addresses important research gaps by studying the little-known and essential contribution of the Centre international de l'enfance to the development of the North Atlantic modern approach to the rehabilitation of people with disabilities.

It fills major gaps in the historiography of children with disabilities in Africa and on the role and exchange of knowledge between CIE experts and local professionals in a de/postcolonial perspective.

Through its interdisciplinary research focus and theoretical framework, this project makes an unprecedented contribution to a field of multidisciplinary studies that is still largely unexplored and in full emergence: Francophone studies on disability. Moreover, it aims to document the past of disabled children who have remained largely forgotten and invisible.

Revealing the past of disabled children, this research addresses crucial and current questions on care, health issues, social policies for vulnerable populations.

Finally, this pioneering project will discuss ethical and delicate issues about discrimination, exclusion or segregation, thus contributing to shape current debates on inclusion of disabled children in European society.