Department for International Development urged to show that it is committed to tackling problems facing disabled people. (
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/jan/15/disability-issues-development-agenda-aid-experts?CMP=twt_fd)
Mark Tran
The Department for International Development (DfID) should produce an overarching strategy on disability as it would send an important message to its staff and other organisations that it was taking disability seriously, aid experts have said.
Bob McMullan, former Australian minister for international development, told MPs on the international development committee that such a step would be the most important thing DfID could do to put disability on the agenda.
Making disability a priority would incur extra costs, he said, but less than expected. "Some things will be more expensive, such as low-rise buses," he added. "I don't want to pretend there is no cost, but it was less than we feared."
Lorraine Wapling, a disability and development consultant, agreed that a DfID strategy document on disability would send an important signal. "It acknowledges that disability is an important development issue, influences the internal organisation and sends an important message to other development actors," she said.
The World Health Organisation estimates that 1 billion people live with some sort of disability – about one in seven people. People with disabilities are statistically more likely to be unemployed, illiterate, to have less formal education and less access to support networks. They are further isolated by discrimination, ignorance and prejudice.
Disability was largely neglected in the millennium development goals, but the signs are that people with disabilities will receive greater attention in the forthcoming framework.
The UN high-level panel that looked at the post-2015 development agenda urged that no one be left behind. During consultations before the panel document was produced, civil society organisations insisted that the next set of development goals should cover the world's most marginalised people, including indigenous groups and those with disabilities.
In a visit to Uganda in October, Lynne Featherstone, the parliamentary under secretary of state for international development, acknowledged that the world had for too long has been guilty of neglecting the challenges, discrimination and prejudice that people with disabilities face and have been too often left behind when it comes to development. As a consequence, disabled people are disproportionately some of the poorest and most marginalised in the world.
She added that the post-2015 development framework provided a "once in a generation chance to finally put disability on the global agenda and on an equal footing with other challenges".
The committee heard several examples of how oversight by donors could leave people with disabilities at a further disadvantage. Edwin Osundwa, Kenya representative for Sense International, an organisation that supports deafblind people, said a DfID programme to support free primary education in 2003 provided textbooks but no learning materials for deafblind people. "It would be helpful for DfID to consider supporting areas of health and education with a view that such programmes include children with disabilities," he told MPs.
Similarly, Ola Abu Alghaib, a Jordan-Palestine-based consultant with Handicap International, spoke of how a USAid infrastructure project in Ramallah in the West Bank neglected to have ramps for pavements, so there was no wheelchair access. She and civil society representatives made the point that it was important to consult people with disabilities on development projects.
Mahesh Chandrasekar, international policy manager for Leonard Cheshire Disability, said as "mainstreaming" disability in development was fairly new, DfID had the opportunity to play a leadership role. He cited the example of Germany, which has developed a national action plan for people with disabilities.
MPs heard that while DfID had programmes targeted at people with disabilities, such funds were not easily accessible because of elaborate conditions. "Some groups don't have the capacity to apply," Osundwa said. "It's still a challenge, even if funds are available."
He noted that attitudes were beginning to change, with east African governments signing and ratifying the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, adopted by the UN general assembly in 2006.
Chandrasekar added: "The convention has definitely boosted the morale of people with disabilities across the world."
In a written submission, DfID said its recently introduced poverty reduction diagnostics would help its overseas offices determine how resources could be best used. These include: identifying and addressing the underlying barriers that exclude people on the grounds of ethnicity or disability; and consideration of social policies that support poverty reduction including those that seek to benefit particularly marginalised populations such as those living with disabilities.
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