17 February 2022, 7:00 pm – 8:15 pm CET
at the Global Disability Summit

Organised by:

• Autistic Strategies Network, South Africa;
• Kenyans Living with Autism, Kenya;
• Autistic Collaboration Trust, Aotearoa.

This event is also part of the global project of Autistic communities, towards the ban of harmful behaviour modification techniques such as Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) – which is sometimes branded as Early Start Denver Model (EDSM) or Positive Behaviour Support (PBS), as well as various local derivatives of these techniques.

Techniques such as Applied Behaviour Analysis or ABA are pseudoscientific practices of trying to change an individual’s behaviour to conform to the social expectations of a particular culture using psychological and physical interventions. Various jurisdictions around the world have passed laws against LGTBQIA+ conversion therapy. However, the same underlying techniques of coercion continue to be applied to young Autistic children and other vulnerable people.

We are building on the results achieved to date, focusing on the human rights violations in countries that have ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and  the Declaration of Helsinki  that is relevant for all members of the World Medical Association’s (WMA). 

In September 2021 our submission to the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill in Aotearoa New Zealand was well received.

Now is the time for the governments all around the world to adopt adequate protocols to protect the human rights of Autistic people, and to act and ban ABA in all its forms. There are many groups, in many different jurisdictions, working in parallel towards this goal.

Target audience

• The global disability community
• Policy makers
• Healthcare professionals (especially General Practitioners and Paediatricians who are involved in preliminary assessments of Autistic children)
• Educators
• Employers
• Parents of Autistic children

Accessibility

Presentations will be in English, and will be provided with live captioning. An English transcript will be published following the event.

Speakers

1. Tania Melnyczuk, Founder, Autistic Strategies Network, South Africa
2. Karen Muriuki, Autistic Self Advocate, Founder of Kenyans Living with Autism and a Bridge Kenya CRPD-SDGs fellow, Kenya
3. Kim Crawley, Cybersecurity researcher and Autistic advocate, Canada
4. Jorn Bettin, Co-Founder, Autistic Collaboration Trust, Aotearoa

Schedule

1. Introduction to Autistic ways of being, the commercial interests and the human rights violations of the global autism industry, and an overview of the current state of campaigns to ban conversion therapies, Tania Melnyczuk & Jorn Bettin, 10 minutes.
2. The situation of Autistic people and spread of conversion therapies in Kenya and CRPD violations, Karen Muriuki, 10 minutes.
3. The perspective of nonspeaking Autistic people in South Africa and around the world on the harm caused by ABA, Tania Melnyczuk, 10 minutes.
4. The hypocrisy of banning LGBTQ+ conversion therapies and the concurrent introduction of ABA as a mandatory “support” for Autistic students in schools in Ontario, Canada, Kim Crawley, 10 minutes.
5. The current state of the AutCollab campaign to ban all forms of conversion therapies in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the remaining challenges, Jorn Bettin, 10 minutes.
6. Outlook: Globally coordinated campaigns by Autistic organisations worldwide to ban all forms of ABA, for all potential target audiences, Karen Muriuki & Jorn Bettin, 10 minutes.
7. Interactive Q&A based on submitted audience questions, all speakers, 15 minutes.

Registration

To join this event, please register via the Autistic Collaboration Trust. You can also submit any specific questions you would like to see discussed. Any questions that we don’t not manage to cover in the Q&A session will be used as fuel for further panel discussions and will inform our online advocacy work on blogs, social media, etc.

• About
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Jorn Bettin

Knowledge archaeologist by day and neurodivergent anthropologist by night at S23M

The more we help each other to question in ways we otherwise wouldn’t – and correspondingly discover new insights about the world and ourselves, the more we are able to learn from each other, and the more we start to understand each other. The gift that we all bring to the world is the (re)generative potential of all the trusted relationships that we co-create.

Latest posts by Jorn Bettin (see all)

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