United Nations: Best Practices for Including PWDs in all Aspects of Development Efforts

The present document has been prepared in response to the request in paragraph 15(b) of General Assembly resolution 65/186, in which the Secretary-General was asked to “provide information on best practices at international, regional, subregional and national levels for including persons with disabilities in all aspects of development efforts”. Its aim is the following:

(a) To establish a set of initial common criteria based on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) for the identification of what constitutes best practices in mainstreaming disability;
(b) To present a number of case studies that illustrate these criteria and/or the efforts to implement them in inclusive development;
(c) To present recommendations that can be proposed for the discussion amongst different stakeholders in development and in the disability community leading up to the envisaged high-level meeting of the General Assembly on disability and development in 2013.

The case studies included in this document have been collected through key contacts and networks. Given the level of detail sought, the production of each case study has required extensive dialogue with the staff involved in the project. In collecting these case studies, the intention has been to illustrate the efforts to achieve the initial criteria for best practices in different regions and thematic areas, with an emphasis on those emanating from recent General Assembly resolutions, namely: capacity building, multi-stakeholder partnerships, collection of data on disability and statistics, promotion of accessibility (built environment, information and communication technology, institutional), social and economic rights of girls and women with disabilities, and development cooperation. Therefore, the case studies presented here are diverse, geographically, thematically and in scope. They range from specific mainstreaming activities and initiatives to organizational and national strategies that address the inclusion of persons with disabilities. They also cover, with different degrees of detail, the criteria for best practices in mainstreaming disability and come from a range of organizations, including Disabled Persons Organizations (DPOs), donor organizations, disability-focused and mainstream non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and United Nations agencies.

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