Nothing About Us Without Us

"Nothing About Us Without Us!" (Latin: "Nihil de nobis, sine nobis") is a slogan used to communicate the idea that no policy should be decided by any representative without the full and direct participation of members of the group(s) affected by that policy. This involves national, ethnic, disability-based, or other groups that are often thought to be marginalized from political, social, and economic opportunities.

The saying has its origins in Central European political traditions. It was the political motto that helped establish—and, loosely translated into Latin, provided the name for—Poland's 1505 constitutional legislation, Nihil novi, which first transferred governing authority from the monarch to the parliament. It subsequently became a byword for democratic norms. In this use, it is closely analogous to one of the most familiar slogans of the American Revolutionary War, 'No taxation without representation'.[1] It is also a long-standing principle of Hungarian law and foreign policy,[2] and was a cornerstone of the foreign policy of interwar Poland.[3][4]

The term in its English form came into use in disability activism during the 1990s. James Charlton relates that he first heard the term used in talks by South African disability activists Michael Masutha and William Rowland, who had in turn heard the phrase used by an unnamed East European activist at an earlier international disability rights conference. In 1998, Charlton used the saying as title for a book on disability rights.[5] Disability rights activist David Werner used the same title for another book, also published in 1998.[6]

The saying has since moved from the disability rights movement to other interest group, identity politics, and populist movements.[7][8]