25th July: The UK’s Department for International Development has hailed the commitments yielded by the Global Disability Summit to advance the rights of persons with disabilities worldwide. Penny Mordaunt, International Development Secretary in the UK, had called for “the contribution all persons with disabilities can make to the success of their nations to be fully valued”.
Nine African government representatives made commitments on social protection and disability, including:
- Uganda’s Minister of Gender, Labour and Social Development, who will engage with the Cabinet and Parliament to expand the Social Assistance Empowerment Programme to “integrate a regular transfer for persons with severe disabilities across age groups”;
- The Government of Rwanda will expand social protection to reach all persons with severe disabilities in the two lower socio-economic categories by 2021 to reach more than 86,000 beneficiaries “and gather evidence towards a more universal approach thereafter”;
- The Government of Zambia will increase the number of persons with disabilities accessing social protection programmes by 10% by 2022;
- The Government of Lesotho committed to introducing a Disability Grant in the coming financial year, upon enactment of a Disability Equity Bill;
- The Government of Kenya will review the targeting criteria for social assistance programmes for persons with disabilities to include more persons.
Commitments were also made to pass new laws to protect the rights of people with disabilities in nine nations, DFID said.
And there were a string of commitments to secure more disaggregated data on persons with disabilities, with, for example, Bangladesh pledging to undertake a comprehensive disability survey, and nations including Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria and Zambia committing to use the Washington Group’s short-set disability questions in censuses.
DFID said that over the next year, progress against the commitments will be monitored and a progress report will be published in 2019.
Development Pathways signed the Charter for Change (pictured) to continue promoting the realisation of the rights of persons with disabilities in our work. You can read our hopes on how the Summit could bring change in a blog.