Disability Awareness in Action (DAA) and Diversity Training Ltd

The research team consisting of Bill Albert, Andrew K. Dube, Mosharraf Hossain, Rachel Hurst undertook to assess the gaps in research with respect to disability and development. They also reviewed current work being carried out in relation to these gaps and recommended the most fruitful areas for DFID’s future research agenda on disability and develop ideas on how the research process should be structured. The work was done jointly by disabled researchers in the North and in the South. The latter worked with a wide variety of stakeholders, including DPOs, in South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

“We have argued that the critical first step to devising a research programme on disability and development is to be absolutely clear on the process or research modalities which will be employed. For the reasons outlined previously, we feel that the most productive way forward is to adopt an emancipatory approach that puts disabled people in the forefront but also embraces genuine partnership working with academics or other professionals.”

They recommended eight areas where research is needed:

1. Researching emancipatory research
A review of the way in which current research funding on disability and development operates could unpick the ways in which disabled people, both in the North and the South, participate in research projects.

2. Poverty and disability
This was the first major research topic identified by the Malawi Roundtable. DPOs were concerned with researching how to get disability effectively addressed in poverty reduction programmes. Although there was some overlap, agency interest tended to be focused more on being able to have data to make a convincing case for the inclusion of disability in development.

3. Disability and new aid instruments
Participants at the Malawi Roundtable were conscious that the new aid instruments, particularly as they are focused on pro-poor growth, were one of the main gateways to getting disability on the poverty-reduction agenda.

4. HIV/AIDS
Research on disability and HIV/AIDs figured prominently in the list of topics from organisations in sub-Saharan Africa. Combating the spread of HIV/AIDs is the sixth MDG and as such is the basis for DFID’s overall policy remit. It is also one of DFID’s priorities in Southern Africa. Supporting DPOS in research around disability and HIV/AIDs would add a valuable dimension to this work.

5. Education
With UNICEF estimating that only 3% of disabled children in developing countries attend school and most of these are segregated, it is obvious why education should receive so much attention. Achieving universal primary education is also a principle MDG. To meet this goal for disabled children is going to be a monumental task.

6. Disasters and post-conflict situations
The KaR project on this subject (Kett, Stubbs and Yeo 2005) has concluded that “There is a vast amount of literature spanning the disciplines of development studies, emergencies and disasters, conflict/refugee situations, disability studies. There is hardly any literature that combines these disciplines and results in useful material on disability in emergency situations in a development context. Inclusive handbooks and manuals do exist but there was little evidence of their use.”

7. Development aid and DPOs/how to strengthen DPOs
The institutionalised asymmetry of resources and power that has been deeply imbedded in the system because of the traditional charity approach to disability works to keep many DPOs dependent, weak and ineffective both in their ability to be representative and to advocate for the rights of disabled people. The legislation and policy research carried out under the KaR programme has confirmed, that with certain exceptions, this is the true at both national and international levels. Research is, therefore, needed into a whole series of questions which touch on the makeup, role and effectiveness of DPOs.

8. Legislation and policy
If development agencies are going to make any impact with respect to mainstreaming disability in their interventions then their must to some degree be a receptive ideological and legislative environment to feed into. For DFID this is particularly important as more aid is being channelled in ways which make it increasingly difficult to impose conditionality.

Read the Executive Summary as a Word document (4 pages, 269 KB)

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