1. Foreword
Why include a disability perspective in development projects?
Many people working in the field of development cooperation think has no direct link to persons with disabilities. While producing this manual we discovered certain commonly held beliefs which lead development professionals to consider it unnecessary to include a disability perspective in their work. These commonly held beliefs are often based on false assumptions or limited information.
Assumption: "There are not so many persons with disability: why should I make all this extra effort for just a few people?"
The facts: There are about 600 million persons with disabilities in the world; 80% living in developing countries. Depending on the context, living conditions and the definition of disability used, 10 to 20% of the population have a disability (1) . A common approach to measuring the prevalence of disability in an internationally comparable way has been developed by the UN Washington Group on Disability Statistics (2) . According to these statistics, 19.4% live with a disability in the United States; 18.5% in Canada, 14.5% in Brazil 13.1% in Zambia and 10.3% in Nicaragua (3) . In Europe, the prevalence of disability is estimated at 15% of the population (4) .
In addition, the prevalence of disability is expected to increase rapidly (by 39% in developed countries; and by 46% elsewhere) because of factors such as violent conflicts; accidents, HIV&AIDS, environmental pollution and an ageing population (5) .
Living with a disability not only affects the individual concerned; it also increases the vulnerability of entire families. In fact, the lives of 25% of the population in the Asia-Pacific region are estimated to be affected by disability (6) . Therefore, considering the perspectives of persons with disabilities in your work does not only address the needs of just a few people.
Assumption: "Including a disability perspective requires specific expertise and effort: I am not a specialist, I have resource constraints and many other priorities".
The facts: Persons with disabilities are part of every target group. Most persons with disabilities do not need special facilities; their needs can be met by ordinary services with increased awareness, change in attitudes, and only minor practical adjustments. They are people first; having rights, needs, and expectations. Most importantly, persons with disabilities are amongst the poorest, most marginalised, voiceless and disadvantaged in society. They have the same rights related to access to health, education or decent transport services as any other target group. Therefore, when programmes and services are being developed, persons with disabilities should be included and consulted as part of the target population on the same basis as every other person.
Furthermore, including persons with disabilities in a development project does not necessarily require that many extra resources. Surveys demonstrate for example that the cost impact to ensure that new buildings are accessible to persons with disabilities is 1.12% on average, ranging from 0.1% for public building to 3% for individual homes (7) .
The main effort required to include persons with disabilities is to be aware of the need to include a disability perspective and to engage the disability stakeholders throughout the project management cycle to ensure that programmes, projects and resultant processes and services are accessible to them on a similar basis to what is available for others (8) .
Including disability in your projects will bring you better results
You are involved in the project cycle management, developing programmes and services for the well-being of populations in various countries. You want to reach better project results and higher impacts.
Including the perspectives of persons with disabilities in your work will help you to do so.
This manual offers suggestions on how projects addressed to a population in general can also benefit persons with disabilities, without or with comparatively little additional resources, and without being a specialist.
(1)STAKES: Lable Us Able: A Pro-Active Evaluation of Finish Development Cooperation from a Disability Perspective. p. 27.
http://www.make-development-inclusive.org/docsen/finland.pdf
(2)(http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/citygroup.htm)
(3) http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/citygroup.htm
(4) EC: Equal opportunities for people with disabilities in the EU. Communication from the European Commission on establishing equal opportunities for people with disabilities: a European action plan (COM/2003/650) 2003. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2003:0650:FIN:EN:PDF
(5) Wiman R, et al: Meeting the needs of people with disabilities. A technical note for the World Bank Poverty Reduction Sourcebook. 2002
(6) Asian Development Bank (ADB) 2002, Regional workshop on Disability and Development - draft recommendations on Disability, Manila, October 2002
(7) EC/ECHO: Review of Core Cross-Cutting Issues and Key Objectives affecting Persons in Humanitarian Crises. 2005. p. 48
(8) op. cit
