In the General Assembly on September 7, after Mrs. Balasundram was elected as a representative by a secret ballot, the following countries were selected to fill the offices:
President Bangladesh
First Vice-President Nepal
Second Vice-President Philippines
Third Vice-President Japan
Directors Taiwan
Singapore
Hong Kong
Reoublic of Korea
An active discussion about the participation of mainland China as an official member was held with Sun Suyuan, the Chinese representative as a guest at the meeting. But the General Assembly did not reach a final conclusion.
The meeting of the new Board of Directors held after the Conference was chaired by President Salam from Bangladesh. The Board decided that its next meeting would be held in Dhaka, November 15 to 17,1997.
Because Japan was selected as the third vice-president, the Asian Conference in 2003 will be held in Japan again, following Nepal and the Philippines. The Japan League for the Mentally Retarded must begin to prepare for that time.
3. International Exchange of People with Disabilities in the Private Sector
The International League for the Severely Mentally Handicapped (ILSMH), a world organization that protects the human rights of people with mental disabilities and their families, decided at its General Assembly held during the 11th World Conference in November, 1994, to change its name to Inclusion International (1.1.). In July 1996, as a result of a mail vote of the members, this name was officially adopted. Through this action, the new idea of "inclusion" was highlighted throughout the world.
It is not known for certain when and where the idea of inclusion first appeared. However, it is an idea and a strategy that aims at full participation and equality for people with disabilities. In short, it has developed from the strategy of integration or mainstreaming that is based on the normalization principle.
Therefore, the first attempts at inclusion were made in the field of education, later expanding into employment and community life. This idea has to do with a new support system, changing in accordance with changes in the concept of disability. It is regarded as part of the transition of rehabilitation strategy in a broad sense. It can be defined as "a strategy of living together with support in ordinary settings".
Debate has been continuous as to what exactly causes the difficulty that people with disabilities have in adapting to and participating in society. That is, the question is what the nature of disability is. Up until now, people thought disability was a personal problem (a condition of pathology or deficiency), and very few people recognized the significance of social factors, depending on the environment and groups.
Social models, such as support models, were considered to be less important than medical models, such as deficiency or deficit models. Therefore, the various fields of rehabilitation attempted to overcome an individual's impairments by evaluating the person's skills in the activities of daily life (ADL), and supplementing any deficit through training and learning. Recently, however, social factors are beginning to be stressed, and the main focus is on quality of life (QOL). In this way, disability is coming to be considered as an issue of the support system, rather than of the individual.
It is in the field of education that the idea and practice of the support system is changing. In England and America, the idea of integration into regular classes has been proposed. However, when this was done, because no special support was given, the criticism was made that children with disabilities were being dumped into the regular classes. This meant that although children with disabilities were in the same classrooms as other children, they were merely "guests", and true integration was not accomplished.
Some people had the opinion that children should not even be classified into those with and without
