Disability Awareness in Action (DAA)in collaboration with organisations in South Africa

This ambitious research was conducted by the DAA with the team comprising of Tomson Dube, Rachel Hurst, Richard Light, Joshua Malinga. The aim was for various representative organisations of disabled people to collaborate in order to critically analyse the law, policy and its implementation (intended to have an impact beyond the limits of the project). They also investigated the nature and extent of disabled people’s influence on the legislative and policy process. The key outcome would be to create strategies for exerting decisive influence on the legislative and policy process.

They also aimed to elaborate the goals of policy makers and disabled people in the construction of legislation and policy, with particular emphasis on apparent synergy and/or dissonance between such goals and provide ‘best practise’ examples.

They found that the generally precarious position of disabled peoples’ organisations in the policy process has been highlighted by the fear, expressed by a number of respondents that candid responses to the project survey would result in recriminations.

As the report states: "Any claim that disabled people are part of the policy process must be viewed in relation to such anxiety and indicates, we believe, the work still to be done to ensure the participation of this group."

On the international level it was found that effective participation at the UN requires that DPOs have relevant ‘in-house’ expertise (i.e. UN procedures and agencies, and international law). Few DPOs can afford such expertise and, when it is available, it is almost invariably provided, pro bono, by disabled people and our supporters on a part-time basis.

The UN has tended to replicate national and regional governmental policy by relegating the expertise and contribution of disabled people, and disablity representative organisations, to that of ‘users’ or ‘consumers’, rather than autonomous agents capable of making an equal contribution. Nationally there has been a welcome increase in awareness of disability as a civil rights issue by governments and policy-makers, with a concomitant growth in the enactment of legislation to protect such rights. However the research said it is clear that legislation is invariably inadequately funded and subject to ineffective monitoring and enforcement. It appears that the mechanisms that exist in the areas examined as part of this project place too much reliance on disabled people’s good will and voluntary effort.

Although DPOs report at least some involvement in drafting legislation and influencing policy over the past 5-years, such involvement has not been given similar status to that provided by ‘professional’ agencies and is extremely weak at the local level. Governments appear to rarely acknowledge a need to resource DPO inclusion in the consultative process or to fully recognise their expertise, often preferring to listen to the voice of single impairment organisations, particularly those of parents and non-disabled professionals. Information is not being communicated – in either direction – from the national governmental and DPO leadership level to grass-roots organisations. Several countries identified the low priority given by their governments to disability rights because of general political and economic factors.

Some examples of good practice were found, particularly in South Africa and Uganda, where disabled people play a significant role in the institutions of government and at all levels. However, even in these countries respondents felt that ‘the grass must be greener on the other side’, that is, in ‘developed’ countries, demonstrating the lack of shared information on the realities of disabled lives, worldwide.

This lack of knowledge on the reality of disabled lives is also evident in governmental and privately funded resource programmes, where it is assumed that there is no need to support DPOs in the ‘developed’ states. Thus, the authors state they: "Have been unable to identify a single state from which compelling lessons could be learned".

Read the Executive Summary as a Word document (5 pages, 364KB)

Read the Full Report as a Word document (36 pages, 671 KB)