Global Disability Summit - joining the movement for change

Organisations of persons with disabilities have been routinely excluded from international development and humanitarian action.  This needs to change.

Progress on inclusion has been made, but it’s not enough. More needs to be done.

The Global Disability Summit with its vision of promoting equality is a timely reminder that meaningful engagement of persons with disabilities through their representative organisations is not an optional extra but a prerequisite to ensuring an inclusive world.

For CBM Global, authentic partnership with and accountability to the disability movement underpins all we do. We’re deeply committed to working alongside people with disabilities and their representative organisations, and to the principle of “nothing about us without us”. We believe that our mission of fighting to end the cycle of poverty and disability can only be achieved through partnership.  

WHAT IS THE GLOBAL DISABILITY SUMMIT?

The 2022 Global Disability Summit is hosted by the International Disability Alliance (IDA), the Government of Norway and the Government of Ghana. It will take place on 16th and 17th February 2022. Held mainly online, the summit will bring together governments to mobilise efforts for the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and to ensure no one is left behind in development and humanitarian efforts. It will also place an emphasis on the efforts that are needed to build back better due to the impact of COVID-19 and the resulting inequalities faced by persons with disabilities around the world.

ORGANISATIONS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES AT THE HEART OF THE SUMMIT

A range of different stakeholders will join the event, all committed to advancing inclusion within development and humanitarian policies and programmes. We welcome the fact that organisations representing persons with disabilities (OPDs) will be at the heart of the summit. Governments, the private sector, civil society, and other stakeholders have made progress on developing these partnerships but more needs to be done. We need concrete steps to ensure equal participation of OPDs in decision making, policy development, and programme implementation for lasting systemic change to happen. 

New report: Lessons learned from partnerships with organisations of persons with disabilities

Our new report, “We have a key role now”: Lessons learned from partnerships with organisations of persons with disabilities celebrates what is working well in our partnership approach and identifies measures to further strengthen our partnership with organisations of persons with disabilities. It is offered as an example of what partnership can mean and as a contribution to the wider efforts of integrating organisations of persons with disabilities into international cooperation.

A listening exercise was conducted by CBM Global from 2020 to 2021 across 14 countries and 32 organisations to gather feedback on our partnerships with organisations of persons with disabilities. This was at a time when CBM Global was setting out explicit commitments towards working in partnership with and being accountable to the disability movement. The Federation, therefore, wanted to gather feedback from OPD partners on their experiences of partnership to date, as a starting point to build upon.