DFID’s Strategy—the four pillars
Strategy pillar one: Inclusive Education
86.Our report on DFID’s work on education published in November 2017, recommended that:
DFID has shown leadership on education for girls and young women in recent years. The Department should now use its influence in the same way to shine a light on the needs of disabled children. It has made great progress with the Disability Framework, but needs to now ensure this is being implemented across all DFID programmes. DFID should use its policy refresh to launch a reinvigorated strategy to support access to quality education for disabled children. We believe that this is a vital area of work for DFID.117
87.DFID’s 2018 Disability Strategy described the situation of access to education globally as follows:
Despite global progress in achieving universal access to education, more than half the 65 million children with disabilities in low- and middle-income countries are not in school. The World Report on Disability found that in low-income countries, only 33 percent of girls with disabilities and 46 percent of boys have completed primary school education, compared with 42 percent of girls, and 56 percent of boys without disabilities. There are multiple reasons for this such as entrenched stigma and discrimination, lack of trained teachers, inaccessible school facilities or a lack of assistive devices, inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities, or long distances to school.118
The Strategy stated that DFID is doing the following to address this situation:
|
88.Send my Friend to School (SMF), raised concerns about the lack of clarity of the delivery plan when it came to inclusive education:
For example, Deliverable 3: Invest in key tools for more effective planning and implementation of inclusive education. This could benefit from a clearer explanation of how this will take place and more detail about the level of investment. The current lack of detail means that it is difficult to assess whether deliverables will deliver significant change.119
SMF further suggests that DFID’s education policy Get Children Learning also needs fleshing out in an action plan that “sets out how the goals of Get Children Learning will be achieved”120 DFID should also build its internal capacity to deliver the goals of inclusive education. SMF further suggested that:
DFID should include inclusive education within the competency framework for Education Advisers and ensure that disability is embedded in job roles and the Education Cadres’ professional development programme.121
89.Clarity of objectives and internal preparedness should be matched by the provision of adequate and effective support and clear guidance to project implementers as well. There seems to be a gap between policy and practice in the implementation of some of DFID’s projects, and those of other donors. SMF wrote:
Donor funding will always be insufficient for taking effective solutions fully to scale on a national level, and so we would encourage DFID to provide guidance on their priorities and strategies for making catalytic investments in the inclusive education space, with a key focus on avoiding pilot projects with narrow prospects for sustainability. Additional technical tools on how inclusive education can be operationalised within countries are needed.122
90.To increase chances of sustainability and synergy, DFID should ensure coordination between different projects, to account for the complex, and often intersectional nature of disabilities. For example, “girls with disabilities are confronted with double discrimination: as girls and for having a disability. Interventions typically focus on one or the other, not on both”.123
91.Better collection of data and properly resourcing DFID’s initiatives are essential to achieving inclusive education. GPE highlighted that:
Millions of children with disabilities are invisible because of insufficient data. This means it is often unclear how many children with disabilities are out of school, the reasons for their absence, and the barriers they face. […] Often, there is a lack of accessible infrastructure, strategies, teacher training, and learning materials for inclusive education.124
Chemonics International added that:
There is also a dearth of research in low-and-middle-income countries on important topics—such as instructional approaches and identification and modification of curriculum—which limits governments, donors and implementers’ ability to apply evidence-based practices in their programming. As DFID has supported disability inclusion research in the past through UK Aid Connect Disability Inclusion and other initiatives, the organization is uniquely positioned to continue to fill this role within the donor community.125
92.The additional costs to enable children with disabilities to access the education system is a concern brought frequently to our attention. SMF expressed concern over whether the inclusive education initiative will be adequately resourced, and highlighted that “the initiative should also ensure that it adequately provides for children’s complex or multiple impairments the vast majority of whom are still excluded from education.126 SMF further suggested that:
DFID should support further research and evidence gathering on the costs associated with learners with additional needs, in addition to what has already been planned through Disability Inclusive Development (DID) and Research and Evidence Division (RED).
And that:
DFID should strongly promote the use of Equity Based Stepping Stone Targets127 methodology to inform equitable education sector plans and the adoption of progressive funding formulae in national education budgets.128
93.Two main concerns were brought to our attention with regards to barriers to inclusion at national governments’ level. First, Chemonics International wrote:
Many of the national governments who committed to creating and implementing inclusive education sector policies and plans during the Global Disability Summit continue to support policies and programmes that provide inclusive education only to those children who are considered to have “mild” and “moderate” disabilities. This results in individuals who are considered to have “severe” disabilities being denied an education altogether or only provided with the options of receiving an education in residential institutions.129
94.Secondly, structural problems at national government levels may prevent the proper implementation of inclusive education. TLMI-UK highlighted that:
Officials of the ministry of education need to have a better understanding of the concept and practice of Inclusive Education and to be more sensitive to the educational needs of the children with disabilities. Physical and attitudinal barriers along with other factors such as lack of trained teachers and appropriate curriculum are the key reasons for low enrolment of children with disabilities.130
95.Families clearly have an important role to play helping or hindering their children’s access to education. The International Development Department at the University of Birmingham (IDD-Birmingham) suggested that:
Parents may be reluctant to send their children to school due to fears of bullying or the perception that education is unlikely to lift their children out of poverty, due to the many barriers that hinder the transition from education to work […]. Disabled People Organisations (DPOs) can potentially play a vital role in identifying out-of-school children and facilitating this process. the strategy should refer to the need to engage closely with families, in order to raise awareness of the potential benefits of inclusive education.131
Parmi Dheensa, Founder and Executive Director of Include Me TOO, stressed to this committee the value of family involvement in delivering all aspects of the Strategy. She mentioned that Include Me TOO’s initiative in the UK delivered when:
… wrapping services around families, making sure they understand diagnostic assessments, making sure the child gets the support they need, and having a holistic approach to meet their healthcare, social and educational needs.132
96.We received evidence that inclusive education is preferred to special schools. The British Council wrote:
The 1994 Salamanca Statement which recognised the necessity of providing education “within the regular education system”. It argues that “regular schools with this inclusive orientation are the most effective means of combating discriminatory attitudes, creating welcoming communities, building an inclusive society” and was signed by 92 governments and 25 international organisations.133
However, IDD-Birmingham highlighted that:
The World Report on Disability134 acknowledges that no country has a fully inclusive education system. Special schools continue to play an important role and are often preferred by parents of children with disabilities. I would recommend that the strategy incorporates plans to develop partnerships with special schools, in order to draw on their expertise and experience to support the development of inclusive education within mainstream schools.135
97.DFID should ensure it is addressing the specific needs of children at each stage of education, taking into account the obvious, as well as the less obvious (intersecting and contextual), barriers to access to education. The hidden costs of disability, relevant to access to education, need to be exposed and budgeted for in DFID’s projects and programmes.
98.It is also important that the implementation of DFID’s projects create norms that will put pressure on national governments to budget for disability inclusion costs in their own planning. DFID should develop specific guidelines and technical guidance notes to implementers across all its education projects, to ensure its initiatives are implemented effectively, incurring no harm to disabled children. DFID’s support to national governments, for the delivery of disability-inclusive education policies, should be targeted and specific and take into account that each country starts from a different base and operates different systems. Technical support must focus on capacity within government to budget for inclusion rather than the building of special schools that will prolong segregation. Collection of data and understanding the interlinked factors causing barriers to access to education in each of these countries is therefore crucial. Data collection should specifically focus on ways to identify out of school children who are vulnerable to compounded marginalisation.
99.DFID should consult on the case for special schools vs integration within the main education system, and the use of ‘Equity Based Stepping Stone Targets methodology’ and promote effective adapted tools for each country DFID operates in.136 Specific actions for involving families in achieving DFID’s inclusive education initiatives should be identified and published in the new delivery plan.
Strategy pillar two: social protection
100.DFID’s Strategy states that:
People with disabilities and their families can face high living costs and barriers in access to healthcare, education, employment and other economic opportunities. We know that social protection reduces poverty, gives people with disabilities more choice and control in their lives, enhances their income security and supports people to cope with shocks and changes in lifestyle circumstances, including those related to disability.137
In the Strategy, DFID committed to the following:
We will build the evidence base around inclusive social protection and push for improved disaggregated data on people with disabilities.
We will continue to work with national governments and other development partners, in our social protection programming to advocate for the integration of the Washington Group questions into social protection monitoring and evaluation systems, both at the level of individual programmes and in system-wide social protection information systems.
101.The inclusion of social protection as a pillar in the Strategy “reflects the growing importance of social protection in many low and middle-income countries”.138 It is important that DFID adopts a holistic approach to social protection beyond its immediate link with poverty reduction. For example, social protection and access to employment efforts are incongruent in some countries, where a person needs to show that they are not able to work in order to access social protection. Dr. Abu Alghaib told us that:
From evidence we have generated at Leonard Cheshire for children accessing education in many countries of operation, conditional cash transfer programmes are given to households on the condition that children go to school, but they do not consider that the education system is not inclusive for certain children. Automatically, this household is excluded from the programme and the child is at higher risk, and there are no other support systems around them. […] In many countries, […] you need to show you are not capable to work to access social protection. […] In Palestine, many households had made the choice not to allow their sisters or brothers to go to work, because they knew it was a precondition of poverty alleviation programmes that no one in the household is working.139
This is a glaring gap in the system that DFID should address in its own programmes, and lead on reform in this area among other donors internationally.
102.Another important consideration in planning for comprehensive social protection is a better understanding of the costs involved. Professor Shakespeare told us about a project he is part of in Kenya:
This is about the technical assessment to understand the extra costs of disability and the different components of a social protection system, not just a pension to compensate for you not working, but helping you get into work and connecting, for example, to a social health insurance system, so you get extra coverage as a result of being in the system.140
Both Dr. Abu Alghaib and Professor Shakespeare agree that further research and evidence gathering is needed “on the additional costs that disabled people face, whether of transport, getting to work, assistance in the home or whatever it might be”,141 and to understand “social protection in its wider perspective, as it is in the UK and many other countries. Without that, we will limit our thinking to poverty alleviation programmes that we know will not, in many cases, tackle the disability element”.142
103.Plan International highlighted a wrinkle that should be taken into account:
Not all people with a disability are economically vulnerable, and not all people with disabilities have the same degree of economic vulnerability. Therefore, programming should be designed in a way that recognises the range of factors and intersectional vulnerabilities that may, or may not, affect people with disabilities.143
104.DFID’s focus on working with national governments was widely welcomed.144 There are, however, issues that need to be addressed. Leprosy Mission International UK (TLMI-UK) pointed to a possible obstacle to delivering social protection where needed:
Often in middle and low income countries, persons with disabilities become of victims of corruption and find it difficult to access social protection schemes and programmes. […] Women are especially more vulnerable in such cases. The governments of middle and low income countries should be supported in establishing a robust administrative system in place that creates hassle-free access for persons with disabilities. The World Bank support to the Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, Martyrs and Disability in Afghanistan to revamp their pension scheme is a good example to ensure access social protection schemes.145
105.Additionally, DFID should pay particular attention to the support families need, in order to take care of PWDs. The ODI wrote that:
Most often, mothers and other female family members are those who provide this unpaid care work while also facing high levels of stigma and social exclusion, and in some cases even abuse and abandonment for having a child with disability. Caregivers are also in need of information and guidance as to how best to support family members with disabilities. While the Strategy commits to work with the Parents of Children with Disabilities network and the Carers network as part of disability mainstreaming within the department, a focus on caregivers is missing in the rest of the strategy and its pillars of action in the Global South. Addressing the needs of caregivers is critical, given that the strategy promises to work towards de-institutionalisation and the promotion of family and community-based care for PWDs.146
106.We received evidence that an important area missing from DFID’s Strategy is ‘access to justice’. Dr. Jaime Lindsey from the University of Essex wrote:
The use of law or judicial mechanisms to restrict or prevent disabled people from making their own decisions is an important area for disability inclusion to focus upon. A recent report for Inclusion London on mental capacity law and human rights, emphasised that there was “a strong desire among Disabled people to be able to participate in court proceedings and tell the judge of their wishes and feelings, with the suggestion that people should be able to participate in court” (Loomes, 2019, 19). In many instances, disabled peoples’ exclusion from participation is the result of judgements about impaired credibility and the perceived vulnerability of disabled people.147
107.DFID should gather more evidence on the implementation of its social protection programmes. DFID should particularly consider whether the focus of social protection programmes on poverty reduction, may obscure the interlinkages between social protection and access to services, like education and employment. DFID should leverage existing research to understand the different components of the social protection system, to assess how the additional costs of disability can be met, and to ensure projects are not inadvertently causing discrimination in other areas of inclusive-development like access to employment.
108.DFID should work to strengthen the appetite and capacity of national governments, and other stakeholders, to engage with DPOs to consult on barriers and opportunities for persons with disabilities relating to their active and full participation in economic and social life. DFID should work with governments and stakeholders, including DPOs, to fund and support the inclusion of people with disabilities in existing social protection schemes—or develop appropriate new schemes—including to facilitate the provision and training on use of enabling devices and technologies. In their work with national governments, DFID should:
i)support the establishment of robust and accessible systems for delivering social protection to PWDs that minimise risks of corruption
ii)secure guarantees of [commitments to] the rights of PWDs to equal and fair access to justice. We would like to see specific deliverables relating to the support of families of PWDs who provide unpaid care, and face stigma and discrimination.
iii)DFID should work with international actors to de-stigmatise speaking up against injustices such as abuse and discrimination of disabled people, and to make reporting such instances easier, particularly for those living in the hardest to reach settings. Those speaking up against injustices must also be protected from further discrimination.
Strategy pillar three: economic empowerment
109.DFID’s Strategy states that:148
A large majority of people with disabilities are not employed, under-employed or earn lower wages than people without disabilities. Gender inequality furthers that divide. It is estimated that 20 percent of women and 59 percent of men with disabilities are in employment, compared with 32 percent of women and 71 percent of men without disabilities. In low and middle-income countries, the loss to GDP from the exclusion of women and men with disabilities from the labour market is estimated to be between 3 and 7 percent of GDP.
|
110.We believe DFID should also lead by example in improving the economic opportunities for disabled people through their own recruitment systems and projects funded by DFID at all stages. Palladium argued that:
By creating an inclusive recruitment process and a working environment that attracts, supports and retains people with disabilities DFID will […] strengthen programmes and help promote broadbased poverty reduction […]. This will also demonstrate how others can be more inclusive in their recruitment practices. DFID has huge potential to harness its spending to promote diversity and inclusion within its supply chains. […] Placing requirements on implementers to deliver on disability related targets, including promoting disability inclusion in their workforce and supply chains, has the potential to have a positive impact on disability inclusion both in the UK and overseas.149
HI made a similar point and suggested that “disability is systematically mainstreamed throughout all of DFID’s Economic Development programming, through creation of clear minimum standards for all financing mechanisms”.150
111.Working with DPOs is essential in this area. IDD-Birmingham wrote that:
Many DPOs around the world provide vocational training and business support services to their members. [there is a] need to work closely with DPOs to further develop these services. […] working through DPOs, which often have large memberships, can be a cost-effective way of facilitating economic empowerment on a wide scale.151
Given the difficulties PWDs face accessing education and other areas of livelihoods, building their skills to access the job market should be part of achieving DFID’s strategic aims in this area. The ODI highlighted that:
There is a significant mismatch between the aspirations of adolescents with disabilities and the disadvantages they face vis-à-vis their peers without disabilities in securing access to market-relevant and appropriate skills development programmes, to credit and productive assets, and to decent and productive employment. Adolescents with disabilities also have limited access to social protection that affords them a basic standard of living. Educational stipends or cash transfers are usually too low to cover the additional costs (e.g. transport, purchasing and maintaining assistive devices, specialised medical care) incurred by adolescents with disabilities and their caregivers.152
These are issues that need to be taken into account in DFID’s strategic planning in this area.
112.To ensure interventions aimed at increasing economic empowerment are as meaningful and effective as possible, DFID should look at how access to economic opportunities affects individuals at different stages of their lives. Plan UK pointed out that:
As the Strategy notes, people with disabilities are often not employed, under employed and/or receive lower wages than those without a disability, and this distinction is particularly profound for women. However, to be genuinely inclusive DFID must apply their ‘life-course’ lens to Pillar 3 to ensure that young women are able to transition from education to work and skills training and access to sustainable livelihoods.153
The issue of access to justice and legal rights featured again in the evidence we received, in relation to economic empowerment. TLMI-UK told us that:
The new strategy needs to take into account the intersectionality of poverty, exclusion and the law. The findings of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor in 2008 apply to persons with disabilities and their exclusion from the rule of law is one of the core reasons for their poverty. It is important that persons with disabilities have access to justice, property rights, business rights and labour rights which are the four pillars of legal empowerment of the poor and there are evidences from Afghanistan on legal empowerment of persons with disabilities as UNDP had included persons with disabilities in their legal empowerment project.154
The private sector
113.DFID’s Strategy does not provide details on how DFID is bringing private sector partners on board to achieve DFID’s strategic aims across all pillars and cross-cutting themes.155 Baroness Sugg however reassured the committee that DFID is taking serious steps to address this. For example, the “private sector department in DFID and the disability inclusion team are working very closely with them [the private sector] to develop more detailed plans”. DFID also “recently sponsored a new disability inclusion category at the FT Awards to praise and encourage the private sector where it does things right”.156
114.To encourage engagement more widely across the sector, DFID stated it is “going to be training 280 Kenyan disabled people’s organisations in-country to engage with the private sector, reaching 1,200 young entrepreneurs”.157 DFID is also developing a best practice guidance note for the private sector with the CDC and the IFC “linked to the IFC Performance Standards, used as a benchmark across the industry and helping to raise the bar across the board”.158 DFID committed to finalise and disseminate this note by the end of 2019159 (indicating that this note would be advisory, not mandatory).160
115.We received evidence of a compelling example of a business case for employment within the private sector of more disabled people. IDD-Birmingham wrote:
In India, for example, the luxury hotel chain ‘ITC Welcome Group’ has produced a Disability Handbook for Industry161 which argues that employees with disabilities ‘tend to have better attendance records, stay with employers longer and have fewer accidents at work’, while also highlighting other important benefits, such as improved company image and boosting staff morale. I would also refer to the need to work with closely with private sector companies to support them in making their workplaces accessible and meeting their legal responsibilities in relation to disability, as well as raising awareness of financial support (e.g. tax incentives) that may be available to them.162
116.An important factor to consider is that there are people with disabilities who are not able to access formal employment. Sightsavers pointed out that:
evidence shows that people with disabilities are less likely to work in the formal sector and so will be less likely to benefit from programmes working to increase employment in the private sector. Therefore any increased investment in this area should take into account the indirect impact that this has on enhancing inequality between people with disabilities and people without disabilities, and take measures to address this.163
117.DFID should ensure that disability inclusion is mainstreamed throughout its economic development programming and is taken into consideration in investment decisions specifically through the CDC. DFID should ensure that its support of any expansion of the formal employment sector be on an inclusive basis. We recommend that DFID considers the effect any decision making on investment may have on the livelihoods of people with disabilities. DFID should ensure diversity at all levels amongst their staff and through their supply chain. DFID should also address the skills gaps to enable disabled people to access the job market, consider options for those who cannot access the formal job market, factor in support for unpaid family carers, and address the hidden costs of disability that may hamper progress on economic development. DFID should incentivise the private sector to be a lead partner in delivering the economic empowerment target, through offering more opportunities to people with disabilities. This should be seen as both part of corporate social responsibility and as a business case. DFID should also consider how to work with financial and credit institutions to encourage enterprise development for disabled people.
118.The committee welcomes the forthcoming good practice guidance note developed in cooperation with the CDC and the World Bank IFC. We recommend that DFID gradually makes the application of this note compulsory to DFID suppliers, to ensure sudden imposition does not cause smaller contractors to struggle. DFID should commit to building the capacity of DPOs, National Human Rights Institutions, and other actors to support the elimination of disability discrimination in employment.
Strategy pillar four: humanitarian action
119.DFID’s Strategy stated that:
People with disabilities are disproportionately impacted by conflict and disasters. They may be particularly at risk of death or injury if they are unable to evacuate, seek refuge, or access sufficient information about the events around them. In the social upheaval that accompanies crises, people with disabilities are at greater risk of abuse, exploitation, discrimination and serious harm. Despite this, people with disabilities are often invisible in, and excluded from, the humanitarian response, and unable to access adequate assistance and protection due to physical, communication and attitudinal barriers. The humanitarian system has been slow to develop its capacity to identify people with disabilities and tailor assistance accordingly. People with disabilities have rarely been able to participate in the planning and delivery of humanitarian responses and there are inadequate accountability mechanisms for them to report issues when they are not receiving the assistance and protection to which they are entitled.164
120.DFID committed to the following in its Strategy:165
|
121.DFID’s leadership in this area was recognised and welcomed across the evidence that the committee received. BOND DDG recommended that DFID uses an upcoming opportunity to push for better disability inclusion in humanitarian action:
The Charter on the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action included a commitment to develop globally-endorsed guidelines on the inclusion of persons with disabilities. The guidelines will be published in 2019 and will encourage humanitarian actors to include people with disabilities. The Disability Strategy commits to roll-out the new guidelines […]. We recommend that DFID uses the upcoming ECOSOC Humanitarian Affairs Segment, UN General Assembly and UK Security Council to promote the implementation of the guidelines.166
122.Tom Palmer from HI also stressed the need to work with other donors to make disability inclusion a reality in humanitarian situations and across DFID’s work:
We do not want disability to become just another item on a long list of priorities that have been passed down. DFID needs to understand and make the linkages between the commitments it has made—for example the grand bargain at the World Humanitarian Summit. These are shared commitments between donors and humanitarian actors on localisation, participation and reducing reporting requirements. All those elements have implications for disability inclusion. DFID staff will be much more inclined and responsive to these requests on disability inclusion if they see how they articulate with the initiatives they are already working on, so it becomes habitual and routine in their work.167
123.As highlighted throughout this Report, collection of data is essential to planning for disability inclusion. Tom Palmer said:
We are looking forward to seeing DFID follow through on the work it is doing with the UN on including an indicator for payment by results, to ensure that UN agencies are collecting and disaggregating data, and including it in their assessments and planning.168
DFID is taking further steps towards data collection. Gerard Howe told us:
We are also seeing the translation of the Washington Group questions into Arabic, Spanish and French for use in humanitarian settings. That is, again, work in progress. The needs of people with disabilities, particularly in rapid onset conflicts and disasters, are acute, but the UN disability inclusion strategy will address some of that, because that is also about how we shape the international response.169
124.To make DFID’s efforts in humanitarian response more effective, there should be a change of perspective in how PWDs are perceived. Tom Palmer told us that:
There is an assumption that persons with disabilities are recipients of aid alone, when we know that persons with disabilities can be active agents in humanitarian action, and organisations representing persons with disabilities can be really positive partners in humanitarian action […]. There are some really good examples where humanitarian actors have worked with DPOs to ensure that humanitarian action is more inclusive. That is something we would encourage DFID to articulate more on.170
IDD-Birmingham also pointed out that:
The 2015–30 Sendai Framework,171 which is the global blueprint for disaster risk management, emphasizes the critical role of people with disabilities and, in particular, DPOs in the ‘assessment of disaster risk and in designing and implementing plans tailored to specific requirements’ (Paragraph 369iii)). I would recommend including explicit reference to Sendai within DFID’s strategy paper and declaring a specific commitment to working closely with DPOs to build their capacity to participate more effectively at all stages of the disaster planning and management cycle.172
125.To ensure its interventions are taking disability inclusion into account, DFID should do more on preparation. In considering funding proposals for example, Tom Palmer said:
Looking at DFID’s rapid response facility, it is important, during the pre-vetting of partners, that DFID considers to what extent those potential partners are prepared to include persons with disabilities in their actions.173
126.In terms of general readiness for disability inclusion in humanitarian response, Tom Palmer told us:
We know that for every pound spent on preparedness, you save nine in the response. That applies to disability and inclusion as well, to ensure that DFID is ready to include persons with disabilities in its actions and that the organisations it supports to provide the response and protection are also ready. That includes preparedness for working with DPOs.174
127.An essential element to an effective response is staffing and ensuring various DFID programmes coordinate their work on disability inclusion. HI wrote:
An essential component of preparedness is ensuring that a minimum level of expertise is developed in-house (for DFID and its partners) and not seen as something to be wholly out-sourced or imported. Being one of the first to sign up to the Charter as well as committing to rolling out the IASC Guidelines in the Disability Strategy’s Delivery Plan, DFID has set an example it would like others to follow […]. We recommend that CHASE put in place a roadmap for implementing the Charter on Inclusion of People with Destabilise in Humanitarian Action and other internationally endorsed humanitarian initiatives.175
Tom Palmer added:
We would be really encouraged to see that protection risk analysis in humanitarian response strategies going forward. We are currently working with DFID Syria as it updates its humanitarian response strategies and thematic strategies on livelihoods, education, et cetera, to ensure that disability inclusion is mainstreamed within all those strategies.176
128.DFID should follow the advice of the 2015–30 Sendai Framework to work with PWDs and grassroot DPOs to assess disaster risk, design and implement plans at all stages of disaster risk planning and management. DFID should develop in-house expertise at CHASE on inclusive emergency and humanitarian response and improve its preparedness for disability-inclusive response. DFID should ensure the interlinkages between all its programmes on disability inclusion are better articulated across the department. DFID should also work closely with other donors to promote inclusive humanitarian action.
117 First Report of Session 2017–19, HC 367, pp. 27–8
118 DFID’s Strategy for Disability Inclusive Development, pp. 12–13
120 Ibid., p. 3
121 Ibid.
122 Ibid, p. 2
124 Ibid., pp. 1–2
127 Equity Based Stepping Stone Targets (EBBSTs) are intermediate targets for the furthest behind children and young people in education (identified through an open and participatory leave no one behind assessment process) set at regular intervals between now and 2030 that plot a trajectory for reaching SDG 4.
136 As long as these “stepping stones” don’t include “deliberate retrogressive measures”. “Progressive realisation” means that States parties have a specific and continuing obligation to move as expeditiously and effectively as possible towards full realisation of CRPD, Art. 24 GC 4 para 39.
137 DFID’s Strategy for Disability Inclusive Development, p. 14
141 Ibid.
144 See for example: The Leprosy Mission England and Wales (DWD0013), and Plan International UK (DWD0017)
148 DFID’s Strategy for Disability Inclusive Development, pp. 15–17
155 Professor Shakespeare in an email pointed to the work of Business Disability International, on making businesses ‘disability confident’.
165 DFID’s Disability Inclusion Strategy, pp. 18–19
172 International Development Department, University of Birmingham (DWD0001), p. 3. The importance of involving PWDs and their organisations is also highlighted in: CBM UK (DWD0022) and Institute of Development Studies (DWD0027)
174 Ibid.
Published: 30 July 2019