4. Disability and the Millennium development goals

Introduction

Disability is not mentioned in any of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the 18 targets set out to achieve these goals, or the 48 indicators for monitoring their progress. Nonetheless, the former president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, has said that 'Unless disabled people are brought into the development mainstream, it will be impossible to cut poverty in half by 2015 or to give every girl and boy the chance to achieve a primary education by the same date - goals agreed to by more than 180 world leaders at the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000.' This statement is often reproduced by disabled people's organisations (DPOs) and their allies when lobbying, but it seems to carry little real weight. Disability continues to be largely ignored as an MDG issue.

With respect to DFID, this lack of attention to disability in relation to the MDGs is brought to light in the Disability KaR paper Disability KaR: assessing connections to DFID's poverty agenda (Ref. A2), and in the Programme Policy Officer's disability mapping exercise, DFID and disability (Ref. A3). The question of disability and the MDGs is also referred to in a number of the Programme's research reports, was the central focus for the first Disability KaR roundtable in Malawi (see information on Roundtables >>), was a key action point at the second roundtable in India and a major question in the Policy Officer's final report, Disability, poverty and the Millennium Development Goals (Ref. A7).

This section outlines why the MDGs are so important for disability and development, why an explicit disability dimension is vital for achieving the MDGs and how the work carried out under the Disability KaR Programme has helped to highlight both of these points and taken the debate forward into action.

The importance of including disability in the MDGs

The exclusion of disability is grievous because the policies of most multi-lateral and bi-lateral development agencies (except USAID) are geared to a greater of lesser extent, to reaching the MDGs. The lack of explicit reference in the MDGs makes it easy for disability to become either peripheral to or to fall entirely off the policy agenda. For example, when asked why disability seemed to have such a low profile at DFID, staff pointed to the department's policy focus on the MDGs and the fact that disability had not been identified as a key concern (reported in Ref A3 and Ref D7). Disability is therefore not mentioned in the two MDG-focused White Papers which inform policy or the Public Service Agreement which details DFID's aims and objectives.

At the Disability KaR roundtable in Malawi the participants made some apparently contradictory discoveries. DPOs were not very knowledgeable about the MDGs and the disabled people they represented were often completely unaware of them. However, by getting together to discuss the issues they soon found out that much of their work, and that of some international non-governmental organisations was in fact contributing to the achievement of certain MDGs. Roundtable participants decided that donors and governments must be made aware of exactly why ignoring disabled people would undermine efforts to attain the MDGs and of what was already being done by DPOs and others. This was set out in goal-by-goal detail at the roundtable, and this, together with other Programme findings, is brought together in the Policy Officer's final report (Ref. A7). Below six MDGs of relevance (out of the total of eight) are briefly discussed with respect to disability issues.

At the Malawi roundtable participants examined their knowledge of the Millennium Development Goals

MDG 1 Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Disability and poverty are mutually reinforcing and disabled people and their families represent a very substantial proportion of the poor, especially the extremely poor.

MDG 2 Achieve universal primary education
This is the only absolute goal and with 98% of disabled children in developing countries not in school it will be impossible to achieve unless they are explicitly brought into the equation.

MDG 3 Promote gender equality and empower women
Disabled women and girls face a complex and layered experience of discrimination and disadvantage. The target of eliminating gender inequality in all levels of education by 2015 will not be reached without considering disability.

MDG 4 Reduce child mortality
In the developing world mortality for disabled children under five can be as high as 80%.

MDG 5 Improve maternal health
Disabling impairments associated with pregnancy and childbirth affect up to 20 million women a year.

MDG 6 Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Disabled people are particularly vulnerable to these diseases, which are also a major cause of disabling impairments.

Conclusions

Even if the MDGs represent little more than another set of empty promises, as many critics have claimed, it is clear that to get a foothold on the international development agenda and into donor policies and practices, disability needs to find its place within them. Furthermore, unless disability is included, the prospects for achieving these goals will be substantially diminished.

Arriving at this conclusion, participants at the second Disability KaR roundtable in India, set in motion an action plan to lobby the United Nations and other agencies to get disability recognised within the MDGs. A petition to that effect has been drawn up and an international campaign is in progress to bring the issue to the attention of the five-year review of the MDGs to be held by the UN in September 2005.