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With the view to promoting Inclusive Education systems, the UNICEF RO for CEE/CIS in collaboration with the Education and Disability Sections at HQ, has developed a cohesive set of products related to Inclusive Education, products that will support the capacity development of UNICEF staff and provide them with a set of materials that can be used in the field. Below you can find a series of webinars and companion booklets, each dedicated to a specific thematic area, under the overall title of A Rights-Based Approach to Inclusive Education for Children with Disabilities.

The series is intended to provide practical guidance to UNICEF staff and their partners on the issues of Inclusive Education with a focus on children with disabilities, by exploring specific concerns, policy and implementation issues specific to thematic areas. The webinars provide the audience with the necessary tools and references to guide further study, and determine the capacity development needs of each country. Each webinar and its companion booklet was developed by an expert on a specific thematic area.

This is a report of the  Expert Group Meeting on Voluntary National Reviews for the HLPF on 15-16 December 2016 at United Nations Headquarters in New York, USA. 

The theme for HLPF 2017 (High-Level Political Forum on sustainable development), 10-19 July 2017, is "Eradicating poverty and promoting prosperity in a changing world". The set of goals to be reviewed in depth will be goals 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 14 and 17.

Key documents for HLPF 2017

Policy Briefs: HLPF 2017  
Global Report on the participation of organisations of persons with disabilities (DPOs) in VNR Processes 
Accessible Information Communication Technology and Assistive Technologies and Persons with Disabilities 
HLPF 2017: Submission Paper by the Stakeholder Group of Persons with Disabilities 

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development provides global opportunity and obligation to work towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for all women and girls, and address the rights and demands of women with disabilities as a matter of priority. This brief underlines the need to mainstream disability into all efforts to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment (SDG 5); highlights key issues for ending poverty (SDG 1) and ensuring healthy lives (SDG 3) for women and girls with disabilities; and calls for closing data gaps on gender and disability.

The brief provides the following at a glance facts about women and girls with disabilities:

• One in five women live with a disability globally
• An estimated one in four households has a person with disabilities
• Women are more likely than men to become disabled throughout the course of their lives
• Women comprise up to three-quarters of persons with disabilities in low and middle-income countries
• Prevalence of disability is higher among marginalised populations and people in rural areas.

Spotlights are made on areas of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, and specific targets and indicators are given. The spotlights are on intimate partner violence, harmful practices (including child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM)), unpaid care and domestic work, women in leadership, sexual and reproductive health and the gender data gap. Data gaps are identified and a five year programme is outlined, Making Every Women and Girl Count, which is designed to provide technical and financial support to countries to improve the production and use of gender statistics in order to monitor the implementation of gender equality commitments in the 2030 Agenda.

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 is to ‘Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’ and the targets and indicators for SDG 4 emphasise the importance of measuring outcomes for children with disabilities (United Nations, 2015b). This paper reports on findings from qualitative research investigating Fijian stakeholders’ priorities for measuring success of efforts within a contextually and culturally meaningful process of disabilityinclusive education; that is, achievement of SDG 4 for children with disabilities. The priorities are presented in light of the specific challenges in Fiji to fulfilling this goal. The research presented in this paper is one part of a much larger mixed method study funded by the Australian aid program that aimed to develop and test indicators for the education of children with disabilities in the Pacific (Sharma et al., 2016). Fijian researchers with lived experience of disability undertook key informant interviews and focus group discussions with 28 participants. The findings include the need for or role of: an implementation plan and resourcing to ensure the national inclusive education policy is activated; improved awareness and attitudes; competent, confident and compassionate teachers; disability-specific services and assistive technology; accessible buildings and transport; and the important role of special schools. Inclusive education reform requires that Fiji incorporates and builds on existing strengths in special and inclusive education to ensure that systems and people are prepared and resourced for inclusion. The paper concludes that targets within SDG 4 are compatible with priorities within Fiji, however additional indicators are required to measure locally-prioritized changes related to barriers which need to be addressed if Fiji is to make progress towards the higher-order targets of SDG 4.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2017, Vol. 4 No. 1

This paper explores the development of disability measures for use in censuses and surveys that can serve to monitor the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (UNCRPD) and to disaggregate indicators identified through the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development and implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The need for data to implement policies and the challenges to the collection of valid and reliable disability data are presented, and the work of the Washington Group on Disability Statistics (WG) is provided as a means to the collection of internationally comparable disability data. By standardizing data collection instruments used to identify the population with disabilities it will be possible to provide comparable data cross-nationally for populations living in a variety of cultures with varying economic resources. The resulting data can be used to assess a country’s compliance with the UN Convention and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and, over time, monitor their improvement in meeting the established requirements.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2017, Vol. 4 No. 1

The 2030 Agenda pledges to foster shared responsibility, recognizes all as crucial enablers of sustainable development, and calls for the mobilization of all available resources. It also commits to multi-stakeholder partnerships and pledges to be open, inclusive, participatory and transparent in its follow-up and review. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) equitably involves community members, organizational representatives and researchers, enabling them to share power and resources through drawing on the unique strengths that each partner brings. It aims to integrate any increased knowledge and understanding into action, policy and social change to improve the health and quality of life of community members. CBPR involves recruiting community or peer researchers, involving them in planning and offering them training to undertake interviews and observations in their context. They are also part of the analysis and dissemination process, and continue to work with local partners on advocacy plans and events after projects and research have finished. People with disabilities are actively part of the research process throughout. Drawing on relevant literature and current CBPR disability research in East and West Africa, this paper puts forward CBPR as a methodology that can enable community members to identify key barriers to achieving the SDGs, and inform how policy and programmes can be altered to best meet the needs of people with disabilities. It demonstrates CBPR in practice and discusses the successes and complexities of implementing this approach in relation to the SDGs. The paper also highlights findings such as the high level of support needed for community research teams as they collect data and formally disseminate it, the honest raw data from peer to peer interaction, a deep level of local ownership at advocacy level, emerging issues surrounding meaningfully involving community researchers in analysis, and power differentials. A key conclusion is that to join partners with diverse expertise requires much planning, diplomacy, and critical, reflexive thought, while emphasising the necessity of generating local ownership of findings and the translation of knowledge into a catalyst for disability-related policy change.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2017, Vol. 4 No. 1

This report focuses on the critical issues of inequalities and social justice and warns that unchecked inequalities could jeopardize the sustainability of economies, societies and communities, undermining efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. It highlights significant gaps in social science data about inequalities in different parts of the world and, to support progress towards more inclusive societies, calls for more robust research into the links between economic inequalities and disparities in areas such as gender, education and health. A short case study entitled "Consequences of inequality for persons with disabilities – experience of ADD International" is included.