5. Mainstreaming disability in development

Introduction

Mainstreaming disability into development has been the overarching theme of the Disability KaR Programme. This focus was recommended in the first report commissioned for the Programme (Ref. A2). Subsequently, mainstreaming has been the subject of two research papers, three reports, the main topic for two of the Programme's roundtables, as well as the primary focus of the Policy Officer's work, including her three country research reports. This section considers why mainstreaming is of such importance and looks at some of the most significant findings.

What is disability mainstreaming?

The concept of disability mainstreaming is not clearly defined in most writing on the subject. In fact, at the Disability KaR roundtable in India participants could not agree on whether inclusion was the outcome of mainstreaming or whether mainstreaming flowed from inclusion.

The India roundtable debated whether inclusion was the outcome of mainstreaming or vice versa

However, the definition below, adopted in the Disability KaR paper Mainstreaming disability in development: lessons from gender mainstreaming (Ref. C3), while not totally uncontested, can be said to be broadly applicable across the entire range of the Programme's outputs. It is derived from the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) definition of gender mainstreaming and in that arena has found broad international consensus.

Disability equality, like gender equality, is a vital outcome with respect to disabled people realising their human rights. A human rights approach has, in turn, been identified by many agencies, including DFID, as what is required to combat poverty in the developing world.

The constraints on disability mainstreaming vary considerably depending on how and where implementation is attempted. Work coming out of Disability KaR has focused for example on mainstreaming in education, in government policy and in the policies of bi-lateral and multi-lateral development agencies. The first is looked at in section 7 on education, while the second two are outlined below.

Mainstreaming disability at the level of the state

The mainstreaming of disability in government policy and practice has been the key demand of the international disability movement for decades. It also the central plank in the UN's Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities (1996). But, as of yet, nowhere in either the North or the South has mainstreaming happened. The Disability KaR country reports on Cambodia, Rwanda and India (Refs A4-6) show that although some slight progress has been made, particularly with respect to education, in all these countries disabled people remain almost totally divorced from the social, economic and political mainstream.
But evidence from the Programme (Ref. D7 and report on India roundtable) shows that the mainstreaming of disability issues by their governments continues to be seen by disabled peoples organisations (DPOs) in India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi as the key strategy for achieving equality.

However, even where disability mainstreaming policies have been developed, the results have been disappointing. For example, in the Disability KaR report The role and effectiveness of disability legislation in South Africa (Ref. B1), it is shown that the country has perhaps the most comprehensive legislation and policy framework for fully integrating disabled people of any country in the world. Nonetheless, its author says that '...with the exception of a few policies such as the Social Assistance Act, the implementation of these policies has had marginal impact on the lives of a majority of disabled people in South Africa.'

Mainstreaming disability in development cooperation

There has been an impressive catalogue of policy initiatives around disability mainstreaming in development cooperation. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) took the lead in 1996 and was followed a few years later by DFID and the Nordic development agencies. A casual reading would suggest that disability had finally broken through and was now on the development agenda.

In the Disability KaR paper Is disability really on the development agenda? (Ref. C2) it is shown that even the most progressive disability policies have not been implemented. It was this disconnection between promise and results which led to more detailed research presented in the Disability KaR report Has disability been mainstreamed into development cooperation? (Ref. D7). This found that of all the many development agencies only USAID was beginning to implement a comprehensive strategy of mainstreaming disability. Elsewhere, for example at the World Bank, disability had become much more prominent, but had yet to make a substantive impact on the Bank's core policies or practices.

At DFID too, despite the impressive issues paper Disability, poverty and development (2000), which contained proposals for mainstreaming disability, a mapping report (Ref. A3) by the Disability KaR Policy Officer concluded that although there were some significant disability projects, mainstreaming had not been implemented in the department.

Conclusions

Mainstreaming, whether in the policies of governments or development agencies, is too often viewed as simply a question of ensuring the inclusion of disabled people. There are similarities here to the debates over the Women in Development (WID) approach which was an attempt to give women a role within existing development initiatives. The problem with the latter was that it did not consider why or how women had been systematically excluded in the first place.

There is a danger of the same thing happening in the process of partially institutionalising disability. Here, de-politicised and technocratic approaches tend to be favoured by bureaucrats and the cutting-edge issues implicit in the UNDP-adapted definition of disability mainstreaming, especially to do with institutional discrimination, unequal power relations and the denial of human rights, are too readily forgotten.

It is understandable that the culture and practices of institutions or states cannot be transformed at a stroke, but the challenge for governments and development agencies is to begin the journey by bringing disabled people into the development tent as equal partners. The work done under the Disability KaR Programme provides ample evidence of why this is needed. It has also offered many examples of how it can be done.

The challenge for DPOs and their allies is to realise that after many years of hard campaigning they have finally got the attention of those in power. Now is the time to hold that attention and keep up the pressure to get disability mainstreamed into the development agenda in a way that makes a real difference to the lives of disabled people.