5. Is disability inclusion relevant in your project?
When strategies and projects are developed with the aim of reducing poverty and improving the well-being of the population, then they are relevant for persons with disabilities and their perspectives should be considered throughout the project cycle.
Why should development projects include the perspectives of persons with disabilities?
Persons with disabilities are children, women and men of all ages, with diverse impairments and life contexts. Like ever other person, they should enjoy equal rights, including the right to participate in matters that concern them. They may experience multiple forms of discrimination, for being female, being older, being from an ethnic minority, or living with HIV&AIDS. One single solution does not suit all of these people in each of their situations. Therefore, persons with disabilities cannot be considered as a homogenous group whose rights will be addressed by only developing specific and separate disability support projects.
Person with disabilities are part of every population a project may target.
What is the inclusion of a disability perspective?
Inclusion of a disability perspective is, from the manager's point of view, a process of change. Nevertheless, change does not signify revision of the main activity. This process of change mainly involves taking the perspectives of person with disabilities into consideration at each stage of the project cycle. It can be seen as a shift from classical development work to inclusive development.
The World Bank (1) defines inclusive development as the result of a combination of principles and processes:
- Inclusion: persons with disabilities should be accepted as equal partners in development and included as full participants in all development activities
- Equity: persons with disabilities should enjoy equitable access to the benefits resulting from development activities. In addition, development activities should promote non-discrimination and equal opportunities for persons with disabilities to participate in every facet of life - civil, political, economic, social and cultural
- Access: persons with disabilities should enjoy access to the built environment, transportation, information, and communications infrastructure, so that they can participate in all aspects of life and thus enjoy the full range of human rights.
Checklist (2): Is disability inclusion relevant to your field of work?
Does the planned development activity contain one or more of the following elements?
- Design and construction of the built environment, particularly public buildings, facilities and housing;
- Development of infrastructure, including transport systems, telecommunications, water supply and sanitation facilities
- Development of small scale industries and enterprises
- Urban/rural community development
- Development of health care and social services systems facilities
- Human resources development, including:
- Pre-school, primary and secondary education
- Higher education
- Adult education
- Vocational training
- Public education campaigns
- Income generation, with special emphasis on improving the situation of the poorest segments of society
- Training of development policy, programme and project personnel.
- If a development activity includes one or more of the above elements, then the activity is relevant from the perspective of persons with disabilities and their families/or their communities
- Human rights
- Enhancing the capacity of civil society organizations
- Gender equality
- Children's rights
- Improving governance
(1) Guernsey, K. et al: Making Inclusion Operational. Legal and Institutional Resources for World Bank Staff on the Inclusion of Disability Issues in Investments Projects. 2006. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DISABILITY/Resources/280658-1172611505565/MakingInclusionOp.pdf . p. 11
(2) Wiman, R. The Disability Dimension in Development Action. Manual on Inclusive Planning. Revised on-line version 2003. p. 15. http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/enable/publications/FF-DisalibilityDim0103_b1.pdf
