Name: Moosa Salie

Organization: International Disability Alliance, World

Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry

Date: 11 April 2013

The International Disability Alliance (IDA)

• established in 1999 as a network of global and, since 2007, regional disabled people’s organizations (DPOs).

• The aim: to promote the effective and full implementation of the UN CRPD worldwide, as well as compliance with the CRPD within the UN system, through the active and coordinated involvement of representative organizations of PwDs at the national, regional and international levels.

• the most authoritative representative voice of one billion people worldwide living with a disability - the world’s largest minority group.

• instrumental in establishing the International Disability Caucus (IDC), a key player in the negotiation of the CRPD.

Our Members:IDA currently comprises eight global and four regional organizations of

persons with disabilities (DPOs):Global DPOs

• Disabled Peoples´ International (DPI) • Down Syndrome International (DSI) • Inclusion International (II) • International Federation of Hard of Hearing People (IFHOH) • The World Blind Union (WBU) • World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) • World Federation of Deafblind (WFDB) • The World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (WNUSP)

Regional DPOs

• Arab Organization of Disabled People (AODP) • European Disability Forum (EDF) • The Latin American Network of Non-Governmental Organizations of Persons with

Disabilities and their Families (RIADIS) • Pacific Disability Forum (PDF)

IDA/IDDC POSITION PAPEROCT 2012

Make the post-MDG framework inclusive of persons with disabilities

The new sustainable development framework must enable a focus on the poorest, most marginalised groups, such as persons with disabilities, ensuring their effective participation in all stages of the process including in the negotiation phase.

The framework needs to be driven by the human rights-based approach, with equality and non-discrimination as priority themes.

The current understanding and definition of poverty, progress and development should be revised so that it goes beyond income, consumption and wealth.

Provisions specific to persons with disabilities:

• The new framework has to be inclusive of persons with disabilities and compliant with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

• Mechanisms should be in place to ensure the effective participation of organisations of persons with disabilities at every stage of the process.

• A revision of overseas development assistance to include disability related markers.

• Any new global partnerships must include persons with disabilities in their international cooperation efforts.

• As established by article 32 of the CRPD, all projects and programmes, whether mainstream or disability specific, have to be compliant with the CRPD, and promote the rights and full and effective participation for persons with disabilities, including by supporting the work of representative organizations of persons with disabilities.

Persons with disabilities were absent from the Millennium Declaration and have remained so throughout the MDG

processes:

According to the UN System Task Team report on the post-2015 agenda, the MDGs have not reached the poorest and most marginalized people. The exclusion and invisibility of persons with disabilities is indicative of how the present framework fails. This has been compounded by a lack of reliable statistics on persons with disabilities. They face discrimination on multiple levels, yet remain absent in the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the MDGs

WHAT IDA HAS DONE SO FAR• UNICEF and IDA co-chaired the online thematic

consultation on inequalities and persons with disabilities • The IDA Chair was invited to the final meeting on

inequalities in Copenhagen in mid February• IDA was also represented at the final meeting on

education (Dakar, 18-19 March) and conflict and fragility (Helsinki, March 13).

• DPO representatives were also present at meetings of the High Level Panel of Eminent Persons set up by the UN Secretary General. Meetings were held in London, Liberia and Bali.

• An IDA delegation visited New York which was comprised of the IDA Chair, Vice Chair and Executive Director (March 24-27 2013)

New York VisitMeetings were held with the following UN Missions:• Ambassador of Ireland, co-facilitator of the Special MDG event on 25 Sep• A joint meeting with the ambassadors of Philippines and Spain, the two co-

facilitators of the High Level Meeting on Disability and Development (HLMDD).

• A meeting with the ambassadors of Hungary and Kenya, the two countries that are the co-facilitators of the Open Working Group on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Kenya being also the Chair of the Bureau of the COP.

• Meetings with the ambassadors of El Salvador, Bulgaria and Bangladesh, all three members of the Bureau of the COP.

• A meeting was also held with the ambassador of the EU, with the ambassador of Greece, the disability rights expert of the Australian mission (the first mission to have a person focusing only on issues of persons with disabilities) and with the Secretariat of the President of the General Assembly.

• The IDA delegation had meetings with the Executive Director of UNICEF Anthony Lake, with the Head of the UNDP Poverty Section Selim Jahan and with the DESA Under Secretary General Wu Hongbu.

Rio + 20• The other relevant area relates to sustainable

development. While this has been a separate process which started in Rio 20 years ago, all seems to indicate that the new framework will include sustainable development goals. Therefore, it was very important that the Rio+20 outcome document (June 2012) mentioned persons with disabilities as one of the stakeholders to be included in this process.

• In accordance with Paragraph 135 of the Rio +20 Outcome Document, governments must commit to promote sustainable development policies that support inclusive housing and social services; a safe and healthy living environment for all, particularly, persons with disabilities.

UN Working Group on SDG’s • The UN has set up a so-called open working group which will work

on producing the so-called Sustainable Development Goals. It seems that this working group will lead the process of negotiating the post-2015 framework after the September Special Event on the MDGs which will take place on September 25. IDA Chair and Vice Chair met very recently the two co-chairs of this open working group (Kenya and Hungary) in order to highlight the need for persons with disabilities to be fully included in their work.

• There is a need for persons with disabilities to be considered as a relevant stakeholder in all discussions on the sustainable development processes leading to the SDGs.

• One of the 30 seats on this group is shared between Nauru, Palau and Papua New Guinea and it would be good if DPOs from these three countries contact their Foreign Affairs departments and their missions in New York to insist on the need to include persons with disabilities in the sustainable development goals.

High Level Meeting on Disability and Development, September 23rd

• IDA has been insisting that this HLM should have a strong focus on influencing the post-MDG framework. Two UN resolutions have made reference to this link. The challenge now is to ensure that the outcome document of this HLM is a good one. 

• A number of regional consultations will take place, one of which will be for the Asia Pacific region financed by Australia. It will be held in Bangkok, organized by UN ESCAP, and will happen on May 14-15. It will be important to ensure a good DPO presence at this event also from the Pacific region.

• The two co-facilitators of this HLM (Philippines and Spain) have recently sent a letter to all UN missions suggesting to Governments to hold national consultations as an input to the process of preparing the outcome document. It would be good if Pacific DPOs suggest their Governments to hold such consultation which should happen not later than mid-May in order to feed into the preparatory process of the outcome document.

Further messages of IDA on the HLMDD

• The need for the HLMDD to really be high level, meaning high level presence of national political leaders which will come for the opening of the high level segment of the General Assembly (September 24th) and for the Special Event on the MDGs.

• To have an ambitious outcome document, as the HLMDD is a unique opportunity.

• The fact that 80% of the world’s persons with disabilities live in developing countries.

• The need to use the HLMDD and the Special Summit to reinforce the message that persons with disabilities need to be included in the post-2015 framework.

• The fact that the Civil Society CRPD Forum to be organized on July 16th will be clearly focused on the HLMDD.

In Conclusion

So far we have done quite well to put persons with disabilities on the agenda in order to avoid their non inclusion as it happened in the Millennium Declaration and in the ensuing MDGs. The fact that we now have the CRPD also helps, but much works remains ahead and we need to work hard at all levels, national, regional and global.

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Thank you for your attention

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