‘How we come together: exploring the participation of youth with disability in Disability Associations of North West Cameroon’

Young persons with disability are a highly marginalised and vulnerable group in most societies, especially in contexts of long standing poverty and inequality, such as the North West Region in Cameroon. For this reason, it is not uncommon that young persons with disability have significant difficulties in achieving the fulfilment of their rights. Young persons with disability, as people with disability in general, have the opportunity to fight for their rights by participating in political and public life. However, in contexts of high vulnerability and exclusion, the barriers faced to accomplish this can be multiple and multi-dimensional. That is why this research paper seeks to examine how participation of young people with disability in a network of disability associations in the North West Region in Cameroon is constructed through a discourse of empowerment, but at the same time is recreating larger structures of exclusion in which the network is embedded in. For this purpose, it sets to understand how notions such as ‘youth’, ‘disability’ and ‘participation’ are constructed and negotiated through social interaction. Through an intersectionality lens, this paper will examine how these issues relate to the reproduction of social inequality.