Can Kenya-Ireland cooperation be reinvigorated to make the Pact for the Future work for One Billion people with disabilities?

Dr James Casey of Independent Living Movement Ireland, with CBM Global Board Member, Dulamsuren ‘Duhya’ Jigjid, outside the UN buildings in Nairobi after the Civil Society Conference

In 2015, the governments of Ireland and Kenya played an important role in co-facilitating the global agreement that is known as the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs as you may have heard them called. The impact of the work of Ireland and Kenya together had the potential to be huge but it is starting to look like that it is going to be untapped.

The SDGs are a roadmap for creating a better world. Also known as Agenda 2030, the 17 SDGs address the many causes of poverty, injustice and damage to our planet. The goals are backed up by 169 targets. These targets outline the actions needed to create a sustainable, prosperous and peaceful world.

The goals are universally applicable. This means they apply to every country in the world. All 191 members of the United Nations have agreed to work towards them. We implement them in Ireland, as well as internationally in Ireland’s Overseas Development Assistance.

Everything sounded so promising in 2015. 

2023 saw a mid-term review of progress against these highly ambitious goals. Unfortunately, progress is bleak. The Goals are failing. The review highlighted that only 12 per cent of the SDG targets are on track. 30% of the targets are going backwards. It is reflective of the state of the world we live in right now, beset with conflict and crisis.

The achievement of the Ireland-Kenya collaboration looks like it will be undermined by global inertia and apathy.

In September this year, the nations of the world meet again at what is being called ‘the Summit of the Future’ to turbocharge the 2030 Agenda and to solidify global commitments to meet the very ambitious targets set.

How realistic is the ambition? In Ireland, we are on target for over 80% of the targets. Starting from a much higher baseline, it takes much less work for us here than our co-facilitators in Kenya. The baseline is lower yet the goals and targets are universal. How can Kenya and other countries like it make the leap in such a short space of time?

Recently, Kenya was the setting for the United Nations Civil Society Conference bringing together senior UN System officials and international civil society organizations, youth changemakers, academia, public opinion makers, and international media to discuss issues of global concern in advance of ‘the Summit of the Future’.

Irish and Kenyan civil society activists were there to argue for a more accountable process.

Bringing voices from Ireland and Kenya together at this critical juncture in achieving Agenda 2030 feels like it has a particular fortuitous resonance. While everything felt so optimistic in 2015, where all nations of the world committed to a brighter future, facilitated by the governments of Ireland and Kenya, the promise has failed to deliver, most particularly for people with disabilities.

Putting Disability Rights at the centre of the September Summit

Commendable as the agreement on the SDGs was in 2015, people with disabilities are at best peripheral to this global agreement. Right now, with preparations for the Summit of the Future underway, the hard fought battle for the inclusion of references persons with disabilities in the SDGs now appears to be in reversal. In the preparatory document, the ‘Pact for the Future’, people with disabilities are not just lacking visibility, they are invisible. This a regressive move and will potentially damage all of the progress made to date on disability inclusion

James Casey, a disability rights activist with the Independent Living Movement Ireland (ILMI) travelled to Kenya on behalf of CBM Ireland, an international NGO working on ending the cycle of poverty and disability, to share perspectives on the progress for people with disabilities here in Ireland with organisations in the Global South.

Dr Casey argues that it is necessary for a change in approach if the world is to come close to achieving what it set out to do in 2015: "The world's social contracts are under strain - it is time to try something new, something democratic and something authentic. We must move from simple consultations with DPOs to meaningful co-creation. We must move from issues to strategy and strategies to solution and it is us, disabled people, that can lead this journey".

Speaking at the Nairobi Conference, James was joined by CBM Kenya’s Country Director, Edwin Osundwa, and the Irish Ambassador to Kenya, H.E. Catríona Ingoldsby, in asking for “A Seat at the Table for 1 billion Persons with Disabilities” in the negotiations on the Summit for the Future.

CBM Kenya’s Country Director Edwin Osundwa, a blind person who advocates with the Government of Kenya for greater inclusion of people with disabilities is of the same view that progress for people with disabilities will not be made without their active involvement in negotiations and policy creation: "The Summit of the Future wants to reinvigorate the social contracts and by us being here today - we say to civil society, the UN and others that disability must be included and part of any process or consultation.”

Ireland’s Ambassador to Kenya, Catríona Ingoldsby, was the only government representative to attend the event organised by the disability rights groups at the conference. The time may be right for Ireland and Kenya to come together again to make sure that the rights of people with disabilities are not lost in the noise that will accompany the ‘Pact for the Future’.

The coming months offers the chance for Ireland and Kenya to crystalise the commitments that they helped bring about in 2015. This must not just be a commitment to ensure that not just the outcomes are inclusive of persons with disabilities but the processes leading up to the Summit are also deliberately made accessible and inclusive.

While the space for civil society engagement with the negotiation process has been limited, it has been even more inaccessible to persons with disabilities and their representative organizations (OPDs- organizations of persons with disabilities). The ongoing consultations do not provide preconditions for participation such as Sign Language interpretation, Braille, real time captioning, or easy read and other alternative formats. The software used for virtual consultations are difficult to navigate for people using screen readers. 

If these preconditions are not being met in the process of the negotiations on global development what does that tell people with disabilities about commitments to their rights? It perpetuates the anachronistic attitude of ableism that people with disabilities are to be recipients of the beneficence of wider society who know best when it comes to disability rights.

This article appeared in The Irish Catholic Newspaper