Policy paper

Global Disability Summit 2022: new UK development commitments to progress the FCDO’s work on global disability rights

Published 16 February 2022

This was published under the 2019 to 2022 Johnson Conservative government

The 18 new commitments will help deliver the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office’s (FCDO’s) new Disability Inclusion and Rights Strategy which aims to embed disability inclusion considerations across our key priority areas such includes global health, inclusive education, and humanitarian action. The 18 commitments are:

1. By 2025 the UK will increase our awareness and understanding of and attention to disability inclusion across our global health, education, economic development, and humanitarian portfolios.

2. By 2025 the UK will establish meaningful engagement with people with disabilities, including through their representative organisations, across priority areas in global health, education, economic development, and existing protracted crises and new humanitarian programming. We will facilitate community empowerment and look to increase the visibility and voices of people with disabilities, finding opportunities to bring them into decision making and planning processes.

3. By 2025 the UK will take tangible action within our existing portfolio of work to support people with disabilities, drawing on analysis or engagement activities across global health, education, social protection, LGBT, economic development, and humanitarian programmes. We will mainstream disability inclusion into our portfolio of programmes, where relevant, work through our multilateral and bilateral partnerships to progress the agenda.

4. By 2025 the UK will work towards embedding results tracking disaggregated by disability across all new activities in education, global health, LGBT, economic development, and existing and new humanitarian responses. We will collect data disaggregated by disability in programmes where this is possible and look for opportunities to increase our understanding of what works on disability inclusion and influencing our partners to do the same.

5. The UK’s Women’s Integrated Sexual Health (WISH) programme will be extended to continue strengthening ground-breaking work with Organisations of People with Disabilities in 2022/23. The programme assesses and addresses barriers which prevent people living with disabilities realising their full Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights.

6. The UK’s British International Investment will build on the 2021 Disability Inclusion Guidance for companies through:

• raising awareness in demonstrating best practice to the investor community to consider in their investment
• embedding Disability Inclusion in its new Policy of Responsible Investing (PRI) which include a list of key recommended practices and promoting and starting relevant discussions on disability inclusion with investees

7. The UK’s Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) will recommit and expand on our ambition set out in 2018. Between 2022 and 2025 we will:

• screen all new projects for disability-specific risks and empowerment opportunities, and where possible and relevant, start working with Disabled Person’s Organizations during the early design phases to help materialise this potential
• embed questions when undertaking impact assessments and surveys of stakeholders in our projects to assess the particular impact on people with disabilities
• identify suitable projects each year and develop project case studies
• conduct training and knowledge sharing sessions on disability inclusion to build capacities and raise awareness

8. The UK’s ‘What Works to Prevent Violence: Impact at Scale’ programme will contribute to more effective, concerted global efforts to tackle violence against women and girls with disabilities. This means in practice:

• testing and building the evidence on new approaches to address violence against women with disabilities including at least two targeted innovation grants alongside wider project mainstreaming
• all data will be disaggregated by disability
• women with disabilties will be consulted through design and implementation
• women with disabilities will be represented on the programme’s advisory board

9. The UK’s ‘Safe to Be Me’ Conference which aims to improve the lives of LGBT+ people will ensure the participation of people with disabilities at the event, including through accessibility.

10. The UK will fund the Global Action on Disability (GLAD) Network, a coordination body of key international stakeholders with a common interest to progress disability inclusive development until March 2024.

11. As a leading donor to the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the UK will use its voice to call for accelerated action to promote the rights of children with disabilities across our multilateral investments, so they are disability inclusive.

12. The forthcoming FCDO 2022 Women and Girls Strategy will ensure that women and girls with disabilities are meaningfully embedded across key priorities and mutually reinforces the 2022 FCDO Disability Inclusion Strategy.

13. The UK will produce and publish an FCDO Organisations for People with Disabilities (OPDs) Engagement guidance by 2023.

14. The UK will ensure all new programme business cases implemented in Africa and all centrally managed education programmes demonstrate participation of OPDs during the design process, where relevant.

15. The UK will actively involve youth disability activists in our wider education engagement inform our future education programmes and policies.

16. The UK will promote the disaggregation of results tracking on global girls’ education targets by gender, age and disability, where possible, and ensure a focus on inclusion in reporting.

17. As a Disability Confident Leader, the UK’s FCDO department will be a kind and respectful organisation which provides a supportive, accessible working environment for our colleagues with disabilities/long term health conditions where they are treated fairly and can achieve their full potential.

18. The UK‘s Human Rights Ambassador will champion the promotion and protection of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all people with disabilities, both in their work in UN multilateral negotiations and engagements in countries.

The commitments can also be viewed on the main Global Disability Summit website.