Opinion: How to make the Global Disability Summit a success

The second Global Disability Summit is set to be held in February, hosted by the International Disability Alliance and the governments of Norway and Ghana. It is critical for the event to go beyond being an opportunity to just talk about disability rights; it can and must become a forum for action.

Unless the summit meets essential requirements around accountability, participation, properly resourced commitments, and meaningfully engaging people with lived experience, it will be a huge missed opportunity.

2018: A key moment

The first Global Disability Summit was held in 2018, drawing much-needed attention to the importance of disability inclusion — something that is often hard to get on the agenda. It also led to commitments from governments and agencies around making global development more inclusive of people with disabilities.

For those of us working on disability inclusion, that was a big moment. It felt like a culmination of the growing recognition that disability rights are a central development issue and a turning point for progress.

But two years later, the COVID-19 pandemic struck. During the health crisis, people with disabilities have experienced increased discrimination. The lack of inclusion within global responses to COVID-19 has clearly and shockingly demonstrated what we have always known: People with disabilities are not taken into account when policies and programs are designed and implemented, and this can have devastating effects.

In the United Kingdom, estimates revealed that people with disabilities accounted for as many as three-fifths of COVID-19 deaths. This may be the case the world over, but reliable data on people with disabilities — another under-resourced area of global development — doesn’t exist in all countries for comparison. The pandemic has shown us how far we have to go until the rights of people with disabilities are actually realized in practice.

This is why Sightsavers’ Equal World campaign is calling on global decision-makers to use the summit to engage with people with disabilities and to make ambitious, achievable, and properly financed commitments.

Here’s what is needed for the summit to be a success:

Stronger participation and accountability

Disability inclusion cannot be achieved by a small number of governments or global organizations, no matter how dedicated and committed they are. Countries that have ratified the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities have an obligation to ensure that their domestic and international laws, policies, and programs are inclusive.

While some donors have made progress on bringing disability inclusion into the mainstream, others still report that as little as 4% of their aid is disability-inclusive — or don’t measure this at all — according to analysis by Sightsavers. Donors need to commit to using the Development Assistance Committee’s disability inclusion marker and utilize that data to set ambitious targets for where and how to improve.

U.N. entities also have to ensure their work is disability-inclusive under the organization’s disability inclusion strategy. But the latest progress report shows that only 20% of entities are meeting or exceeding the United Nations’ own requirements. To change this, these entities must commit to and implement clear action plans to make sure disability inclusion is a reality throughout all pillars of the U.N. by 2025.

We also want to see other groups, particularly in the private sector, attend the summit and recognize the role that they can and should play in ensuring inclusion.

Clear, measurable, and financed commitments

The 2018 summit saw some positive steps forward and many good commitments made. But a number of other commitments have been hard to track or measure — and, in some cases, haven’t been implemented due to a lack of clear financing or action plans. For example, some countries committed to “tackling stigma and discrimination,” which is positive in theory but must be backed up with concrete action if it is going to drive change.

Adding to this, only around half of the stakeholders that made commitments at the summit reported on their progress two years later, leaving a gap in accountability.

The 2022 summit must move beyond the good intentions and toward concrete action and financial commitment.

Governments, multilateral agencies, and development professionals need to be clear about the change they are committing to, the timelines to implement them and the resources that are needed to secure that change.

We want donors to come together to support initiatives that can drive change. At the 2018 summit, Norway and the U.K. funded the Inclusive Education Initiative, hosted at the World Bank. This grew out of a recognition that joint action on inclusive education was required. As we recover from COVID-19 — and the education crisis it has amplified — initiatives like this are more needed than ever. Governments must step up at the summit and pool resources to ensure that progress made is built upon and not lost.

Prioritizing the people furthest behind

Even within the disability sector, some people are particularly marginalized and face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination. Working with UN Women, Sightsavers and our partners have been speaking to women with disabilities about their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. They have told us that they feel ignored and that their voices and experiences are not listened to.

At the summit, particular focus must be placed on women and girls with disabilities. We want to see specific commitments to tackle some of the most pervasive forms of exclusion that they experience, such as gender-based violence and the denial of their sexual and reproductive health rights.

This should also extend to other people who have been marginalized — for example, older adults, refugees, and displaced people. Their voices must be heard, and clear commitments should be made to prioritize the rights of the people who are often excluded from development efforts.

If we are truly committed to building back from COVID-19 in an inclusive way and creating a more equal world, global leaders must use the summit to take real action on disability rights.