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. It is also a long-standing principle of
Hungarian law and
foreign policy, and was a cornerstone of the foreign policy of
interwar Poland. The phrase was used in
Czechoslovakia as "About us, without us" () to lament the
Munich Agreement of 1938, which annexed the
Sudetenland to
Nazi Germany without the participation of Czechoslovakia. More recently, the phrase "
Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine" has come into use in the context of the
Russia-Ukraine War, stating the idea that no negotiations about Ukraine's status should take place without Ukraine's participation.
Joe Biden and
Olaf Scholz have both used the phrase in relation to the Ukraine war. The phrase formed part of the title of
Krzysztof Kieślowski's 1972 documentary ''
Workers '71: Nothing About Us Without Us'' (). The term in its English form came into use during the 1990s when it was adopted in
disability-activism circles.
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. Disability-rights activist
David Werner used the same title for another book, also published in 1998. In 2004 the
United Nations used the phrase as the theme of
International Day of Persons with Disabilities, and it is also associated with the
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Use of this slogan has expanded beyond the
disability-rights community to other
interest groups and movements. In 2021 the
World Health Organization published an eponymous guide recommending that children and adolescents be involved in the decision-making process for health-related policies that affect young people. == See also ==