Close your eyes and listen to the grunts and jostling, the smack of rubber on cement and triumphant high-fives. You could be listening to a pickup basketball game anywhere. But you’re in Afghanistan and this is much more than just a game.

It is the country’s very first wheelchair basketball tournament and the players are all disabled. Some have lost limbs to landmines, while others have suffered spinal cord injuries in car accidents. But you wouldn’t know it by looking in their eyes.

In a country where disabled people are generally given pity but no rights, this sight is nothing short of incredible. Look beyond the sweat and smiles, and you’ll discover a newfound sense of purpose.

Their coach and referee, US basketball player and trainer Jess Markt, describes the feeling as euphoric. “Two years ago these guys were barely leaving their houses,” he says. “Now they say they feel like they can fly.”

This wheelchair basketball tournament was organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in cooperation with the Afghan Para-Olympic Committee, earlier this year. The head of the ICRC’s orthopedic rehabilitation program, Alberto Cairo, says that up until recently, such an event would have been unimaginable.

“I used to think physical rehabilitation wasn’t a priority, but I’ve learned that dignity cannot wait for better times,” says Cairo, who gave a TED Talk last year at TEDxRC².

Suddenly, one of the players scores a goal and Alberto cheers and gesticulates from the sidelines. “I’ve been in Afghanistan for 22 years but I’m still an Italian,” he jokes. “Seriously, though, you can see the players’ psychological and physical transformation… they’ve become so much stronger in many ways.”

This tournament is part of the “big wish” Cairo shared in his TEDxRC² talk for helping disabled people overcome the social and physical barriers they face in war-torn countries. “You can give someone a pair of artificial legs, but what really makes them stand tall is a sense of dignity and pride,” he says in the talk. “It’s a job and knowing they have a place in society. It’s being a student or an athlete. It’s having a say.”

Over the past two decades, Cairo has hired more than 250 former patients to work at the ICRC’s seven rehabilitation centers in Afghanistan. Together, they’ve helped 100,000 people learn to find the strength to not only walk, but also to hope again, through education, training and microfinance programs… and now, sports. The wheelchair basketball initiative has helped train more than 125 Afghan players, including 25 women.

Today, as we mark the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, we celebrate their success, and the amazing potential of disabled people in Afghanistan and the rest of the world.

.
This post was written by Anna K. Nelson, the curator of TEDxRC² and spokesperson for the ICRC.

From TEDxRC² comes this moving story of midwife Edna Adan Ismail. We share in honor of the International Day of the Midwife, May 5, 2012.

Edna Adan Ismail is a nurse, midwife, UN diplomat, French Legion of Honour recipient and former foreign minister of Somaliland — an unrecognised, self-declared state that has been going it alone for the past 20 years. The tireless 74-year-old has poured everything she has, including her pension, into providing much-needed health care to a population with one of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world — a situation that’s been exacerbated by Somalia’s long civil war, which led to the death or departure of nearly all of the country’s health care workers. In her talk at TEDxRC², Edna shared her vision for saving many more lives across the Horn of Africa, proving that “if it can happen in Somaliland, it can happen anywhere.”

Learn more about Edna Adan Ismail’s hospital

Read Nicholas Kristof’s Mother’s Day 2011 columnm, featuring Edna >>