Inclusion of People with Disabilities
Project description
Title: Sector project on Inclusion of People with Disabilities
Commissioned by: German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
Country: Global
Overall term: July 2016 to June 2019
Context
There are more than one billion people living with disabilities worldwide. 80 per cent of them live in middle-income and low-income countries. People living with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to poverty. They have less access to education, employment opportunities, health services and social welfare than people without disabilities. Numerous barriers in infrastructure and information systems, and the tendency to stigmatise people living with disabilities all impede their appropriate participation in decision-making processes and therefore prevent them from fully asserting their rights. International cooperation actors have been focusing increasingly on people living with disabilities in their work for some years now, but more remains to be done overall.
The signatories to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities undertake to make their international development cooperation inclusive. Germany ratified the Convention and its Optional Protocol in 2009 and also anchored its implementation in German development cooperation activities in the government's National Action Plan. In 2013, Germany was also one of the first countries to adopt an action plan for the inclusion of people living with disabilities in development cooperation. However, people living with disabilities do not yet benefit from the German Government’s development cooperation activities to the same extent as people without disabilities. The ‘leave no-one behind’ principle is a central imperative of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It underlines the fact that the objectives of the Agenda can only be considered to have been achieved when they have also been achieved for people living with disabilities. Five of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) explicitly name people living with disabilities as a target group.
Objective
BMZ, its implementing organisations and strategically selected partners take greater account of the inclusion of people living with disabilities in their development activities.
Approach
The project will run across sectors and regions. It will provide technical and strategic advice. BMZ will advise on developing a strategy for the inclusion of people living with disabilities.
The project will support the measures taken to include people living with disabilities in German development cooperation partner countries. Cooperation with civil society will be strengthened. In addition, positions and strategic approaches will be developed, on the basis of which the German Government will engage in international negotiation processes and networks for the inclusion of people living with disabilities.
In cooperation with the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the project will assist the Commission of the African Union in developing a new strategy for the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on the African continent. Measures in these fields of activity will be aimed at promoting gender equality and participation of people living with disabilities in the implementation of projects.
Results
The action plan for the inclusion of people living with disabilities has helped governments, civil society and, increasingly, the private sector to recognise the importance of including people living with disabilities. Country and sector strategies adopted in the German Government’s development cooperation work increasingly refer to taking the rights of people living with disabilities into account. More than 40 projects are now working on the inclusion of people living with disabilities.
Methods and tools designed to improve the inclusion of people living with disabilities have been developed with the support of the sector programme and are being used by both BMZ and the implementing organisations.
With the support of the sector project, the German Government has successfully advocated for more attention to be paid to the rights of people living with disabilities in relevant processes and debates, such as the formulation of Agenda 2030 and its indicators. Within the framework of co-financing by the Finnish Government, the Commission of the African Union has been supported in more firmly establishing inclusion of people living with disabilities, both institutionally and at member state level.