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>> Maria: Thank you and thank you to everybody for coming,
braving the elements today.
It wasn't the most climate state to get it.
So I'm going to talk about the missing 650 million.
According to estimates, there are around 650 million persons
with disabilities globally.
Yet, they have been largely absent from the many discussions
and decisions that determine their lives.
To celebrate International Day of Persons With Disabilities,
which is actually tomorrow the third of December,
we'd like to examine some of the current debates,
discussions taking place within academia,
international development practice, and a policy level,
and examine why these voices have been missing for so long.
Just a point of note, the international convention is
to use persons with disabilities,
I'm going to use disabled people and persons
with disabilities interchangeably.
Just to give you a bit of context
and some background information, of the 650 million persons
with disabilities worldwide, just quite roughly seven to 10%
of the global population.
About 80% of them live in developing countries,
that's more than 400 million people.
They tend, of course, then to be living in the poorest countries
and be amongst the poorest of the poor.
A colleague of ours, Roger Rodel [assumed spelling],
calls it the world's biggest minority.
Many more are indirectly affected.
The United Nations estimates that 25%
of a population is indirectly affected
by disability one way or another.
For example, if they live in a household
where the family member who has a disability.
So what does this mean for persons with disabilities?
Why are they missing?
Partly it is the result of invisibility, stigma, prejudice,
discrimination and exclusion.
I think I'll have to shout over that won't I?
Persons with disabilities, particularly women and children,
are very vulnerable to violence, exploitation and *** abuse.
Women in particular face double discrimination on the basis
of their gender and on their disability.
There are strong links between disability and poverty.
Whilst anyone can be born with a required disability
or a impairment, poor people are significantly more likely
to become disabled because poor people have less access
to safe maternal and child health practices,
to clean water, to food, to healthcare, to education,
and adequate living conditions.
And once disabled, they are much more likely to fall
to the very bottom of the economic ladder.
Poorer people also have limited representation,
political participation such as voting rights and all
of these factors can contribute to the circumstances which lead
to the systemic entrenched social exclusion
and large alienization [assumed spelling]
of persons with disabilities.
Many developing countries across the globe.
These factors are also accentuated by conditions
of conflict and other humanitarian emergencies.
They also have very limited access
to things like employment.
Persons with disabilities are statistically less likely
to be in formal employment.
According to the International Labor Organization,
the UN office for issues around work, unemployment for persons
with disabilities is thought to be around 80%
in the developing world.
It's not much better in industrialized countries.
It's estimated by the ILO to be between 50 and 70%
within industrialized countries.
But also things like access to healthcare,
persons with disabilities are routinely denied access
to healthcare.
For example, it has been known that less than 5% of persons
with disability who require rehabilitation services have
access to them in developing countries.
And the WHO estimates, the World Health Organization,
estimates that over 20 million women acquire disabilities
particularly and obstetric [inaudible] as a result
of complications during pregnancy and childbirth.
Neither is the education factor much better.
According to the current estimates
by United Nations Education, UNESCO,
around 97% of all disabled adults are illiterate
and over 90% of disabled children
in developing countries do not attend school.
This is particularly attenuated for women.
Women with disabilities are statistically likely
to be more illiterate than men.
And this has implications for poverty, future generations
of children, and obviously
within international development the links between literacy
and poverty are already well established.
Also it means lack of access to things like shelter, housing,
food, water and sanitation.
Why is this the case?
And why has there been so little discussion
within the international development literature
about disability, and so little attention
to ensuring representation and inclusion of persons
with disabilities themselves within these processes?
Persons with disabilities are often, unfortunately,
invisible within mainstream development programs.
This is partly due to the belief that disabilities,
a specialist area of programming, and is costly,
both in terms of human and financial resources,
unless it is someone else's responsibility.
Two of the most common refrain are heard by those work
in the area of international development, particularly
from mainstream development agencies is
that they don't understand disability.
It's a specialist area, or we don't see many persons
with disabilities in the areas we work in.
But do they stop to question why?
When disabled people are included, it's often as a list
of those considered as particularly venerable along
with women, children, older adults
and other minority groups.
From this perspective disability is yet another box to tick.
An inclusion becomes less about achieving right
and confronting prevailing negative attitudes,
than achieving targets.
Disability, like gender, is a cross-cutting issue,
it affects all groups and all societies.
But mainstreaming disability
into the wider development agenda is not in itself enough.
Prevailing and deeply entrenched social attitudes beliefs
and discrimination must also be addressed.
For example, within the United Nations,
the number of dedicated staff out of the staff of thousands
who work full time on disability issues, is less than 50.
Most disability organizations or disabled persons organizations,
and non-government organizations
or international development organizations working
on disability issues have a very small component
of global development arena funding
and have very little access to the resources,
and indeed cooperation, chances to cooperate
with the larger players.
And it's very hard to accurately quantify the amount of resources
that are actually dedicated to disability issues
within international development.
But this lack of focus means
that disabled peoples organizations,
and non-government organizations working on disability issues are
in fact a very small component
of the international development arena.
In many ways, the history of the relationship between disability
and the wider development agenda,
reflects more general debates about representation,
legitimacy, inclusion, participation and voice,
as well as more pragmatic discussions about allocations
of donor funding, how these funds are spent, accountability
and the evaluation of their effectiveness.
I'm going to talk about some examples from humanitarian aid.
This is a sector I work in and have particular experience of.
In this sector, there's very little evidence of the amount
of money allocated to disability issues,
apart from specific projects such as rehabilitation programs.
For example, despite the amount of money allocated
to tsunami affected areas after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004
and indeed the Pakistan earthquake in 2005,
or indeed in Darfur where this picture was taken
where there's an on-going crisis, it's very hard
to get an accurate picture of the amount of money that's put
in for disability issues.
Despite this, the World Health Organization estimates the
on-conflict will be the eighth most common cause
of disability worldwide by 2020.
And over an estimated 30,
sorry an estimated 3.5 million refugees
and internally displaced people live with disabilities
in refugee camps and urban slums around the world.
Conflicts and disaster situations then can be a
significant cause of impairments.
That may be due to direct injuries stepping on land minds,
cluster munitions, gunshot wounds,
but also the indirect effects such as lack of access
to healthcare programs, immunization programs.
Yet, disabled people are often the very least visible
in emergencies, and sustain disproportionately higher rates
of morbidity and mortality.
And in the aftermath of [inaudible] disaster,
may find that their situation is in fact exacerbated.
For example, by the loss of family members, or careers,
by the loss of assistive devices,
or the lack of medication and healthcare.
Disable people are often unable
to access the very emergency humanitarian aid
that they're supposed to be able to access.
This may be through communication difficulties
and ability difficulties, or just a general lack of access.
And an unawareness.
Disabled people may then become more vulnerable,
not only to violence and abuse,
but also to a further impairments
and further disabling conditions.
It's also worth pointing out that 10%
of any population following a disaster is at risk
of developing serious mental health problems as a result
of psychological trauma.
So that also has a long term consequences.
And in particular
in humanitarian situations we're looking at context that,
where people are very poor
and have very little coping capacity anyway.
So that could be compounded by disability.
There are also ways in which these needs
and humanitarian needs are assessed.
Many of the assessments, often unintentionally,
lead to exclusion stigma and discrimination.
Many of them lead to no guarantee of services.
Therefore many disabled people, including those with,
without visible impairments, such as mental health problems,
or epilepsy, choose not to self identify.
It may be that the act of identifying themselves
as disabled will lead to more discrimination
in the communities and environments
that they're living in.
But this then perpetuates the myth
that there are hardly any disabled people
in these environments.
Our research has shown the disabled people
in their organizations are really rarely consulted
or included in the decisions that really impact
on their lives, particularly in humanitarian situations.
And there has been little analysis of how
and why disabled people are excluded,
and what those specific vulnerabilities are.
Or of disabled people organizations are rarely given
the opportunity, or the resources
to develop these capacities, and there's almost little
or no evidence of any of the impact of these inventions
on the lives of disabled people.
However, things are changing and they're often good things.
The role of, I'm going to talk a little bit about the role
of the global disability rights movement.
To understand the impact
of the international disability movement has had both
on international disability rights,
as well as the wider development agenda.
I first need to give a little bit of background
to the different models used to talk about disability and ways
to understand disability issues.
This is perhaps the best thing as a continuum
from the charity model
with often the way disabled people are seen as something
to be pitied and helped with little or no recognition
of equal rights, or the role that discrimination plays.
It is particularly evident in the developing countries,
and particularly still today evident in many countries.
Then there's the medical model.
This defines disability, or disabled people
by their impairments, and offers medical or technical solutions
to elevate these impairments.
It's an individualistic approach that does not look
at the social barriers.
However, advances were made in the 1960's
when disable people's organizations came
to constitute an important element
of the Civil Rights Movement in both developed
and developing countries.
Invariably these organizations are run and managed by people
with disabilities themselves.
The social model defines disability
as the social consequence of having an impairment.
And therefore the inequalities faced
by disabled people can only be overcome
if societies themselves become inclusive.
Really, only since the late 1960s did disability come
to be conceived as a social, political issue.
It is argued that many of these, the social and, sorry,
the charity and medical model still predominate
in many areas today.
The social model is underpinned by human rights
and a human right based model.
Disabled peoples organizations have come
to constitute an important element of civil society
in both developed and developing countries.
Their principal mandate is to advocate for the implementation
of a rights based approach to disability policy and practice
and nothing about it is without, oh a good picture,
the other is a campaign in Sri Lanka,
headed by a social disability.
The rights based model focuses on facilitating participation,
inclusion, and representation.
Crucial to this approach is the active engagement
of civil society movements, particularly
in developing countries.
But simply claiming to implement the human rights approach
in policy and programming, does not automatically ensure
that all activities undertaken by government stoners
and civil society institutions will guarantee those rights.
Inclusion of disability issues
within the international development arena began
in earnest in the mid 1970s, and was mainly concerned
with the provision of disability services
in developing countries,
particularly community based rehabilitation.
As community based rehabilitation,
or CBR as it is often known, was originally conceived.
It was essentially based on the principals of the medical model,
but adapted to suit rural environments.
It's important to highlight that the disability movement is not
against the provision of disability services per se,
but rather it's a question of who has control
of determining how such services are provided,
managed, and evaluated.
So it's very important to note the World Health Organization
has just released, after a very long discussion,
the new CBR guidelines.
These are a very comprehensive.
I think there are seven booklets that have guides
to community based rehabilitation services
in developing countries.
And they really reflect the social and rights based model
and reflect this general shift.
Nevertheless, attention does remain
between all these approaches.
And this shift perhaps exemplified
by the new CBR guidelines,
represents a more interactional model,
which supports this broader social model approach
which includes health and medical components
such as rehabilitation, and is concerned more with finding
and evaluating the most effective strategies
for combating exclusion, discrimination and poverty.
We might call these targeted approaches.
These are somehow in contrast to a more mainstreamed approach
in which disability is included, some say assumed,
as part of wider development and aid initiatives
in much the same way as gender is.
The question is how does this contribute to equity?
But it's also important to note that the involvement of the work
of the global disability rights movement has led to a huge gain.
Since 2003, activities, practitioners
and other stakeholders began meeting
to discuss the possibility of a conventional on the rights
of a person with disabilities.
By 2006 they had a convention drafted and by May 2008,
20 member countries of the UN had signed
and ratified the convention, thus ensuring it passed
to international legislation.
To date, 147 countries have signed the convention,
and 96 have ratified it.
The first country to sign for interest was Jamaica.
Other countries who signed very early on were Mexico,
New Zealand, [inaudible], and colleagues have told me
that [inaudible] was particularly targeted
because it only had 12 members within the UN
and therefore it was very easy to target them.
Very important to tell you
that the convention is the fastest signed human rights
convention in UN history.
And America has signed and ratified it, signed,
not ratified, the convention.
It's the seventh human rights convention,
nevertheless it's still relatively under the radar.
It's intended as the human rights instrument
with an explicit social development dimensions.
It adopts a very broad categorization of persons
with disabilities and reaffirms that all persons with all types
of disabilities must enjoy human rights and fundamental freedoms.
We've got, the definition here sort of exemplifies this link
between the social and rights based model.
The definition is that the disability is an evolving
concept that results from the interaction between persons
with impairments and attitude and an environmental barriers
that hinder their full and effective participation
in society on an equal basis with others.
This is a little bit drawn out, again, in the first article
of the convention, which goes on to say, that persons
with disabilities include those that have long term physical,
mental, sensory impairment, which interaction
with various barriers may hinder their full
and effective participation in society
on an equal basis with others.
The convention clarifies and qualifies how all categories
of rights apply to persons with disabilities
and identifies areas where adaptations have to be made
for persons with disabilities,
and to effectively exercise their rights as well as areas
where these rights have been violated, and where a protection
of rights must be reinforced.
However, the convention should not be perceived as a panacea
for eradicating the social exclusion, discrimination
of persons with disabilities.
It's a necessary instrument for upholding these rights but prove
that it's [inaudible] will be in how it is implemented.
It's a little early to determine whether monitoring
of evaluation frameworks are sufficiently rebuffed,
particularly international and southern national levels,
and especially with the number of governments have
yet to sign up to the convention.
Nevertheless, it has had some very specific
and positive benefits, and I'm going to give you one,
topically I thought, because yesterday was World Aids Day.
One of the strongest areas, where they've had success is
on *** and AIDS awareness.
Persons with disabilities were largely excluded
from *** awareness, and AIDS awareness and education programs
across the African, in fact across the globe,
largely due to the commonly held belief
by both the people working in the field
and by local people themselves, that persons
with disabilities didn't have sex.
As noted, persons with disabilities,
while many of the same support structures,
aid and interventions in all other sections of society,
but it's how these aids and interventions are provided
that makes the difference.
The first piece of work on *** and AIDS
and disability was undertaken in 2002 compared to other work
on *** and AIDS this had a tiny budget of only about $80,000.
Nevertheless the work surveyed 57 countries,
looking at both disability organizations,
disabled people organizations as well as ***
and AIDS organizations asking each other if they had heard
about if disability had heard
about AIDS awareness and vice versa.
Almost no agencies working on *** had done any work
on disability in their campaigns
or their education awareness programs,
conversely no disability organizations
at that point had done any work on *** and AIDS.
That resulted in a global campaign
of which the very nice logo of the person
with the AIDS [inaudible], as well as specific campaigns.
This one is a picture from Africa campaign
and shows how sign language interpreters were used to do ***
and awareness training and, in Kenya and Nairobi.
And this year, at the UN headquarters in New York,
in New York, the director of the UNAIDS,
Michelle Cederbank [assumed spelling],
has presented a statement on *** and AIDS
and persons with disabilities.
Another more successful arena has been
within the millennium development goals.
The continued exclusion of persons with disabilities
from mainstream development and aid programs has meant
that not only will the international community fail
to eliminate poverty, and fail to achieve it's own targets,
such is the millennium development goals,
of which *** eradication is but one, but would also fail
to address human rights issues.
The millennium development goals are global benchmarks put
in place by the international communicator, community,
to indicate their achievement by 2015.
Currently, there is nothing on disability
or disability inclusion in any
of the millennium development goals.
Yet, every goal is as relevant to persons with disabilities
as is to all other members of the community.
For example, the eradication of malaria, *** and AIDS,
or promoting gender equality.
Without inclusion, the goal
of eradicating global poverty will remain unobtainable.
Disability has often been seen as a secondary issue
within the international development arena.
Partly as a result of framing of disability
as a specialist health issue,
rather than a human rights or a poverty issue.
As a consequence of the medical and charity models
of disability, it has been wildly believed
that including persons with disabilities in aid
and development programs are expensive and a specialist area.
Therefore disability has remained a low priority
on both national and international policy agendas.
These millennium development goal commitments provide an
international policy framework and a subsequent chance
to shift this perspective, which further strengthened
by the United Nations convention on the rights of persons
with disabilities, provides an impetus and a unique platform
for the advancement
of the international disability rights agenda and development
in which to engage with wider global development issues.
Again, some successful results of,
of this have been a special committee set
up by the United Nations to work on the inclusion
of disability targets within the millennium development goals
and a global call for action by the UN general assembly.
And lots of these discussions are now actually focusing
on what's called the post-2015 in agenda.
What will happen when many of these targets,
or most of these targets won't be reached?
What's going to happen after 2015?
And returning to the humanitarian sector,
my final examples come from the opportunities as well
as the challenges that can emerge out for crisis.
So often a [inaudible] an expression
that a crisis is an opportunity, crisis is an opportunity
and a danger, an opportunity to really highlight the issues
for disabled people who have faced in societies in general.
For example, the picture on the right, on your right, my right,
your left, my right, is taken in Liberia
where I've been doing work for the past year with disability,
disabled people's organizations, looking at human rights issues
for people who have been affected by conflict.
The opportunities are there.
There's a huge international presence.
There's still about 12,000 United Nations peacekeepers
in a relatively small country.
There's also a large amount of funding for development issues.
And this is bolstered by the convention.
So we've been working very hard to really find
out what the biggest issues are for disabled people
in Liberia at this moment.
The other picture comes from [inaudible] where many
of you remember was very heavily destroyed
by the tsunami in 2004.
And this again is disabled people,
parents of disabled children, communities getting together
to campaign for wider issues about disability inclusion.
Again after the crisis, after the tsunami,
there was a huge opportunity, big media presence,
lots of resources,
and significantly huge reconstruction opportunities is
actually much easier to campaign for accessible schools,
accessible hospitals, and accessible public buildings
when they need to be rebuilt from scratch than it is to try
and make already existing buildings accessible.
Again, as I mentioned earlier, more recent work
on needs assessments, particularly
in the emergency context has focused more on the analysis
of the context on the situation,
rather than on specific vulnerabilities.
For some marginalized groups,
assuming that everyone is the same marginalizing them,
is best ineffectual and can be downright dangerous.
As is noted earlier, if people are invisible,
if they can't access information and there's a lack of awareness,
how are they accessing any kind of aid
or humanitarian intervention.
We need to understand and celebrate diversity.
From a rights based perspective, being an older adult,
being a woman, or a person with disabilities,
does not make you more vulnerable per se,
rather it is a lack of access, information and support
which exacerbates this vulnerability.
From a rights based perspective,
everyone has the equal opportunity
to access the same services and facilities.
This does not negate the issue
that some people do require more support and assistance
to attain these and more protection
when they're unable to do so.
But the key point is, it's not the need any different
for any persons with disabilities,
it's how they are delivered that makes a big difference.
And by way of a second example, one of my roles
over the past year has been as the global focal point
for disability and revision of the Sphere Hamburg
on minimum standards in emergencies.
The Sphere project emerged as one of the leading examples
of standards for humanitarian practice in the mid 1990's.
This was really the result of a kind of global cause
to do better after the conflicts in [inaudible], Bosnia,
as many of you may remember.
The global response was seen to be somehow ineffective.
So the Hamburg focuses on what to do
to ensure effective humanitarian interventions.
Focus in particularly on four key technical sectors, health,
water and sanitation, food and nutrition, and shelter.
It is still, and continues to be,
one of the most wildly used technical handbooks
in the humanitarian sector.
It was my job to collect the evidence of best practice
and expert opinion on the inclusion of persons
with disabilities in humanitarian responses.
The current revision is due to be completed in April 2011.
And it's been a real chance to reflect on these challenges
and opportunities, the opportunities
to increase disability awareness both amongst the agencies
working in the humanitarian sector,
as well as about the humanitarian sector
and the sphere standard amongst the disability community.
And just to illustrate, this picture was taken in Arica
in [inaudible], so that, and it's working
with local disability activists going through each
of the sphere standards to really think about how,
what could be done to better include disabled people.
It was also an opportunity to move away, as I said,
from this earlier issues, focus very much on vulnerabilities
and far less on people's capacities in coping strategies
on what disabled people could do themselves in these situations.
And again, we worked very hard to link with many
of the other crosscutting issues,
older adults, children, women.
A lot of these issues faced the same issues of access
and exclusion assessment participation representation.
And finally, I'm going to give you a few specific examples.
For those of you in the audience that are technical engineers,
you will observe the hand pump
in the top left hand corner is probably not an accessible hand
pump, and is not.
But it's, this is a hand water pump, a bore hole water pump
in a, in a community in [inaudible].
And really what we wanted to highlight in the feedback
to the, to the water and sanitation technical experts was
that actually the biggest issue for disabled people,
it may be important to know how much water they need.
But actually, they need to be able to know
that they can get the water in the first place.
If they can't get any water in the first place,
whether it's five liters, or ten liters,
a little bit of a moot point.
And also communication.
How do you know where to go to access the toilets,
all these kind of issues.
Similarly issues around food.
Of course it's very important to know nutritional standards
and nutritional qualities of food.
But equally, if you can't actually get to the food
in the first place, for example this is taken
in Pakistan after the earthquake.
And for a person with mobility difficulties, trying to pick
up a cup of, a sack of five kilo sack of rice
or flour is very challenging.
How do you do that yourself?
So again, we focused on access, availability,
communication, information.
Similarly the picture of the ladies outside the shelter,
that's actually taken in Sri Lanka and not after the tsunami,
but after 23 years of civil war.
Again, the issues around shelter, particularly
around whether the shelter's accessible
of course is important.
But again about access.
But it is also to think about when people are coming
out of these shelters, when people are transitioning home,
where are they going to go.
Huge issues of people with disabilities about land rights
and housing ownership.
And finally health.
This is again in the Pakistan earthquake,
doing some outdoor clinic surgery.
And again, once we acknowledge
that disabled people may well have medical conditions,
they also need access to general healthcare, in particular access
to sex and reproductive health.
These were just some specific examples.
I work mainly in a research center, so a lot of the gaps,
a lot of the work we do is focusing on the gaps
in this research area.
In particular, we have an opportunity to work
across other university college regions and departments
and really, really try to develop this idea
of a crosscutting issues about disability.
We're also fortunate to be funded
by the UK government's department
for international development.
We have something called a crosscutting disability research
program, which again focuses on working
with other differed funded research programs
to put a disability component into their work.
Again, in an attempt to stop this kind of silo of disability
and get people to really think
about disability in their own work.
And it's really been a challenged,
but also some very interesting outcomes from that.
We undertake a lot of reviews.
Much of the current data about persons and populations
of people with disabilities is anecdotal and lacks any kind
of strong evidence base.
Reviews can give a state of the art perspective as well
as highlight the gaps and needs of further research.
This particularly includes work on poverty
and as I said earlier, initial work being done reflects the
trends that as countries get wealthier inequalities increase.
This isn't just income inequalities,
poverty can be a really great leveler,
and as people become wealthier,
both gaps in those inequalities increase significantly.
The gaps between the disabled
and nondisabled people really increases and there's a small
but growing literature, body of literature,
particularly nuance literature, exploring the correlations
between poverty, social economic inequalities,
and disability prevalence.
This really looks at the notion
of multidimensional poverty based
on Martin [inaudible] work.
And it looks away from solely an economic perspective to look
at equality of access to things like education and employment.
And as, as you hopefully have seen
from the examples I've given, these gaps are strong
for people with disabilities.
We are also researching new and more effective ways
of accessing disability, not just from a medical
or a charity perspective and away
from an impairment based perspective.
But looking at the interaction between the person,
their impairment, and their environment,
and looking particularly at the barriers to do that.
We also focus a lot of getting this research into practice.
It's a common refrain
that there's no good doing all this research if it sits
on a shelf in somebody's department and we really focus
on getting this into policy
and having some kind of effectiveness.
And here our partnership is [inaudible] disability really
helps to get that into practice.
So what are our on-going challenges?
Why do we need all this data?
Why did I start with this question about 650 million?
As I said, much of the data focuses on impairments
and concentrates rather on deficits, instead of looking
at the discrimination and lack of access faced by persons
with disabilities within their communities.
Defining and labeling disability is a complex
and controversial notion and has a number of consequences
in terms of identity, attitudes and access to resources.
It's also challenging and there are often many local
understandings of who is disabled,
and what constitutes disabilities.
This means there's little internationally comparable data.
And what there is often indicates that hiring
in countries, tend to have high rates
of registered disabled people.
For example, statistically I think New Zealand has a great,
and someone can come back and tell me this entry,
about 27% of persons with disabilities.
India their last census in India said something like 1.3%
of the population was disabled.
It is important to note that statistics
and prevalence rates often link to welfare assistance
and other social protection schemes through which persons
with disabilities may be more easily identified.
Despite this, economic and political conditions
in developing countries are considered to be a major cause
of the presumed higher disability prevalence rates,
wide spread poverty results in inadequate nutrition,
harmful livelihoods, lack of healthcare, war and disasters.
All would be expected to correlate
with higher levels impairment, but as I've said, this is not
yet born out by the evidence.
Inevitably the differences in measuring instruments used
to influence prevalence rates in developing countries
and the very low percentages reflect the lack
of good data collection instruments
or rather the failure of many efforts to even collect data
on disability in the first place.
Partly because of the lack of evidence about data,
a commonly heard refrain, again as I said earlier,
is that persons
with disabilities therefore do not constitute a significant
percentage of the population
and they are not visibly accessing programs.
This has implications for funding allocation,
service delivery, and the evaluation of inclusion.
But it also raises questions
about how agencies undertake assessments
about poverty and inclusion.
And whose voices are being listened to
and how these voices are understood.
So on the one hand, stakeholders, the donors,
the governments, the research communities,
the disable peoples organizations
and the international organizations,
need to have a better idea of the number of persons
with disabilities, but on the other hand there's far less
attention devoted to why people have become disabled,
and what happens to them over time.
Which brings us to other challenges, global trends,
shifting demographics, what are the links between disability
and AIDS, and chronic diseases and disability,
and other future areas of humanitarian
and development concerns?
The convention does give us all something
to be cautiously optimistic about.
But it's optimism must be tempered
by how well it is implemented at national level.
How these efforts are evaluated, and what the impact is
on the lives of persons with disabilities.
As well as the efforts on behalf of all those working
in international development to ensure that all of our research,
our programs and policies, are undertaken
in a genuinely inclusive day.
Which brings me to my final slide.
The annual observance of the International Day of Persons
With Disabilities on the third of December,
aims to promote an understanding of disability issues
and mobilize support for the rights, dignity and well being
of persons with disabilities.
The United Nations themselves suggest
that the day can be observed through four key areas,
the involvement of all interested communities
and they particularly highlight schools, universities
and similar institutions, so I guess we're doing our bit here.
They also suggest organizing forums, public discussions
and information campaigns in support of the day which focus
on disability issues and trends, and the ways and means
by which people with disabilities
and their families pursue independent life,
sustainable livelihoods and financial security.
They also suggest celebrating the contributions of persons
with disabilities may to the societies they live,
as well as finally practical action
to further implement the norms and standards
which concern persons with disabilities and inclusion
in social life and development on the basis of equality.
And these are just some examples I've found
from around the world, particularly these from Sumbawa
and Sri Lanka of campaigning groups and on International Day
of Persons With Disabilities.
So I call on you to do this in your research, your work,
and your every day life, to think about how all
of our actions have an effect,
and how we can be more inclusive in these actions.
Thank you.
[ Clapping ]
>> Well thank you very much Maria.
We really have only time I think for about one question,
because we do have to leave at five to one.
So any questions?
Yeah, over there.
>> Hi.
>> There's a microphone coming to you.
>> My student.
>> Yes excuse me.
I just wanted to know in terms of the represent
for the process [inaudible] is now will be more included
in the sense that in the last handbook it was one
of the main transfers on access but it wasn't as much included
as probably should have been.
My interested question was, what has been done
to represent the process for the other transfers from access,
and is there any cross sectional approach of multiple, so called,
vulnerabilities that will be included
in the next sphere handbook for practitioners in the field?
Thank you.
>> Very good question.
Thank you.
The question was really about the revision process.
The sphere process is a very inclusive one.
And the idea is that we did global consultations.
Many of these were email based, but we also tried to do
in country consultations where possible.
And that has been relatively successful.
But a gap identified, as you rightly say,
is linking with other cross cutting issues.
For example, of course within the groups we had women
who may well have had older people, but the recommendation
for the next revisions which will probably be
in five years time, is to try and think a bit better how
to draw together all of the so called vulnerable groups,
and have them really working together to identify a lot
of the challenges I've highlighted here could be the
same for, are the same for older adults and many
of the other vulnerable group of people, *** and AIDS.
So, so you're right, it's really a gap that we need
to plug in the next one.
We don't have that much time to do it this time.
>> Thank you very much Maria.
And thank you for the question.
And I must call a halt there.
So [inaudible] thank Maria, again thank you very much indeed
for a very interesting lecture.
Thank you.
Bye.
[ Applause ]