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This two-page summary resource compiles key data on the CRPD-compliance of Official Development Assistance (ODA)-funded programmes. This analysis was originally published in Inclusion International's 2020 report, Excluded from the Excluded, which revealed that 36% of projects that included people with intellectual disabilities in 2018 used methodologies that promoted segregation.

This summary resource profiles key data on the CRPD compliance of ODA-funded programme methodologies by thematic area - including livelihoods, education, emergency response, and service provision programmes. The summary resource also shares key recommendations for organizations implementing programmes to ensure CRPD-compliance.

Background: In low-income and middle-income countries women and girls with disabilities are more likely to experience violence than those without disabilities. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) can help to address this. However, in countries like Botswana we know little about the preparedness of NGOs and DPOs to increase inclusion in and access to programmes addressing violence.

Objectives: To explore the capacity and preparedness of NGOs and DPOs to ensure that women and girls with disabilities can participate in and access programmes addressing violence.

Methods: A qualitative study was undertaken using interviews with 17 NGOs and DPOs in Botswana to understand the organisations’ level of and ability to deliver programmes addressing violence against women and girls.

Results: Both NGOs and DPOs lack elements of universal design and reasonable accommodation, and thus are inaccessible to some people with disabilities. Some programmes address violence against women but lack skills and resources to accommodate people with disabilities. In contrast, DPOs work with people with disabilities, but lack focus on violence against women with disabilities. Participants identified opportunities to fill these gaps, including adaptation of policies and structural changes, training, approaches to mainstream disability across programmes, development of disability-specific interventions and improved networking.

Conclusions: Botswana’s NGOs and DPOs are well positioned to address violence against women and girls with disabilities, but need to increase their accessibility, staff knowledge and skills and disability inclusion. Training, resource allocation and participation of women with disabilities in NGOs and DPOs is needed to drive this change.

African Journal of Disability, Vol 9, 2020

This rapid review addresses the queries:

• What is known about the prevalence, incidence and severity of the sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment of people with disabilities. This should take into account age and gender where possible, and humanitarian and conflict contexts. It would be good to know: - Globally and in specific regions, what evidence exists about the extent of sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment of people with disabilities (disaggregated by age and gender)?
• What evidence exists about the extent of sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment of people with disabilities in the aid sector, including both recipients of aid and working in the aid sector (disaggregated by age and gender)?
• What are the barriers to reporting for people with disabilities?
• What is your assessment of the quality of the evidence? Where are the gaps?

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is a watershed in the human rights of users and survivors of psychiatry. This course is offered with an emphasis on how users and survivors of psychiatry can use the CRPD to advance human rights of persons with disabilities.

The Convention of course guarantees the rights of all persons with disabilities, in all their diversity.  Major constituencies organized at the international level included the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry, World Federation of the Deaf, World Blind Union, World Federation of the Deafblind, Inclusion International (persons with intellectual disabilities and their families), International Federation of Hard of Hearing Persons, and Disabled Peoples’ International (cross-disability).  They organized all disabled people’s organizations and allies into the International Disability Caucus, and aimed for the Convention to be equally relevant to all persons with disabilities irrespective of the type of disability or geographical location.  Every constituency finds what it needs in the text, and the Convention can be approached from a number of different starting points to uncover its potential.

The course is taught by Tina Minkowitz, Esq., a human rights lawyer and survivor of psychiatry who was instrumental in developing the relevant provisions.  She represented the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (WNUSP) in the drafting and negotiation of the CRPD, and subsequently founded the Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (CHRUSP).

This toolkit seeks to empower women with disabilities and organizations working on their behalf to make use of the available U.N. human rights mechanisms to ensure that the human rights violations women with disabilities experience receive redress and to make sure that statements, recommendations, observations, and guidance from the U.N. incorporate an intersectional gender and disability rights perspective. 

Chapter 1 of this guide provides an introduction to the practice and procedures of the three main U.N. human rights mechanisms: treaty bodies, Special Procedures, and the Universal Periodic Review. 

Chapter 2 identifies the ways in which civil society can engage with the U.N. human rights system. This section provides an overview of when and how civil society can provide necessary information to the U.N. human rights bodies and the advantages and challenges of different types of engagement.

Chapter 3 provides guidance on developing advocacy strategies for successful U.N. engagement, looking in greater detail at the type of information that civil society should be providing to the U.N. This section also discusses collaboration with other organizations and strategies (including media strategies) for implementing U.N. standards at the national level

This study of people of refugee backgrounds explored how disability is culturally constructed in the family context, including barriers and enablers to social inclusion and service uptake in Brisbane, Australia. Key themes included the lived experiences of people with disability in their country of origin; experiences of the functioning of government and non-government services; family; barriers in communication and language; transport as a barrier to access; the community of people from their country within Australia; and service gaps and needs. Participants had experienced stigma in their country of origin, and for some this continued within their community of origin. Language and lack of engagement by government and non-government services contributed to service gaps and access barriers. Family remained important. People from refugee backgrounds living in Australia experience significant and compounding barriers to service access, and have unmet needs. They have a limited voice in the current policy context, and lack knowledge and support to facilitate interactions with the current system. Further research would assist in development of a more detailed understanding of these issues.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2016, Vol. 3 No. 1

This resource contains a hyperlinked list of the thirty social indicators used by the Zero Project in their study to measure the worldwide implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD). These indicators have a particular focus on independent living and political participation

An easy read introduction to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)​ which were adopted in September 2015 at the United Nations General Assembly

"The present study, developed under Human Rights Council resolution 25/20, is focused on the right to live independently and be included in the community, and the enjoyment, protection and promotion of that right as a substantive means for the realization of other rights, as a condition for avoiding institutionalization and segregation in health and social settings, and as a prerequisite to provide for the full development of the capabilities of persons with disabilities and their meaningful participation in, and contribution to, society"