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This paper explores inclusive education for children with disabilities in Mongolia in line with the global commitment captured in SDG 4, based on data from a 2019 survey of more than 5,000 households in Ulaanbaatar, and 4 provinces.

ADB EAST ASIA WORKING PAPER SERIES No.28

Understanding disability-related costs is critical to building social protection systems that truly support inclusion, participation, and sustainable escape from poverty of persons with disabilities across the life cycle. It challenges some usual approaches with regards to targeting, mutually exclusive benefits, and focus on incapacity to work rather than support to inclusion. 

Supporting the dissemination of a background paper, the webinar presented the diversity of disability-related costs and the role of different methods used to assess them. It also presented some practices of accounting for disability costs in the design of mainstream social protection schemes as well as how low and middle-income countries can progressively build the combination of cash transfers, concessions, and services needed to address them.

Speakers topics were:

Understanding disability-related costs for better social protection systems.

Accounting for disablity related costs in design of mainstream family assistance schemes, the case of Moldova and Mongolia.

Supporting a survey to estimate the good and services required for basic participation in Indonesia.

How social protection systems can progressively address disability-related costs: the case of Thailand. 

Not either or Disability allowance and economic empowerment in Fiji.

This case study on inclusive infrastructure in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia is the first part of a series of six global case studies. The series is being developed to understand global priorities for inclusive design within the Inclusive Infrastructure work of the AT2030 programme; to build evidence on the awareness, understanding, acceptance, application and experience of Inclusive Design and accessible environments globally, particularly in lower and middle-income countries

An Emancipatory Disability Research in Mongolia was carried out as part of a project aimed at promoting independent living among young adults with disabilities living in the national capital Ulaanbaatar (UB). It was focused on young adults with disabilities living in the 9 districts of UB and was seen as a part of the process which provides information and skills to persons for independent living. It was based on the social model of disability - it looked at the different ways in which the society creates disabling barriers which block or make difficult the participation of persons with disabilities in the different domains of life. The idea of conducting the emancipatory research came from an interaction between some Mongolian DPOs and Tegsh Niigem, a Mongolian NGO active in the areas of rehabilitation, who then asked AIFO-Italy for technical support to conduct it. EDR in Mongolia was implemented through a new approach called a “Community-Based Emancipatory Disability Research” (CB-EDR). A group of young persons with different disabilities were identified as volunteer-researchers by their DPOs, trained and then supported to carry out research in 12 broad areas which they had identified, over a period of 18 months. The researchers, individually or in small groups, carried out research on one theme at a time by collecting information about it from the field. They met periodically to share and discuss the findings of their research and to build a common understanding about the key issues related to the selected theme, and what could they do to overcome the barriers they had identified.

Original Research Articles

• Quality of Life of Persons with Disabilities in Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region, Ethiopia
• Health-Related Quality of Life of Wheelchair Fencers, Sedentary People with Disability and Conventional Fencers in Brazil, Assessed by Short Form 36 (SF-36)
• Environmental Accessibility Assessment for People with Vision, Hearing and Speech Disabilities in Mongolia
• Impact of Exercise Training on Depression among People with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A Narrative Review
• Intersections of Disability and Gender in Sports: Experiences of Indian Female Athletes
• ‘Enabling Access’: A Pilot Study on Access and Use of Assistive Products in the Northern Province, Sri Lanka

Brief reports

• Happiness and Resilience among Young Physically Disadvantaged Employees in India: A Pilot Study
• Barriers Faced by Persons with Disabilities in Formal Employment in India

This brief explores funding at the intersection of women’s rights and disability rights and offers steps donors can take to ensure that their grantmaking is more inclusive of women with disabilities and to support this emerging movement. Background is provided by recent mapping by Women Enabled International about the state of advocacy by women with disabilities, the amount of funding in 2014, sample grants and example use of them. Tips from peer donors and women with disabilities are given.

Purpose: This article aims to present the role of community health workers in the implementation of a comprehensive CBR Programme in rural Mongolia, and to explore the main challenges that arise in this specific geographical and socio-economic context.

Methods: Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews with CBR workers from three selected provinces; short meetings and interviews with respective provincial level CBR coordinators complemented the information acquired. Additionally, a workshop with national level CBR stakeholders was carried out in order to review and discuss the findings.

Results: The study highlighted a number of practical barriers (including long distances and lack of transportation, low population density, and harsh climate conditions) which constrain the work of community health workers in the areas studied. In relation to disability, the study shed light on the difficulties found by community workers in shifting from a medical approach to disability to a new approach that emphasizes prevention and rehabilitation. Exploring interviewees’ experience in the five areas of CBR (health, education, livelihood, social, empowerment) the authors found that working in the areas other than health is perceived as difficult due to insufficient training as well as objective contextual barriers.

Conclusions: Despite many challenges, CBR represents a significant improvement for disability action in rural Mongolia. In this context, the local community health workers are well suited and willing to act as CBR workers; nonetheless, more training and some tailoring work to adapt the Programme to the context is needed if all potential results are to be achieved.

Limitations: This study did not include direct observation of CBR activities or consultation of beneficiaries and other stakeholders. Their involvement and consultation would certainly improve the understanding of all the issues raised.

CBR Matrix, proposed in the CBR Guidelines, provides a systematic framework for organising and analysing CBR activities. A sample of experienced CBR workers, active at community level in 7 countries , were asked for information about different activities they actually carry out, so as to understand the applicability of CBR Matrix framework in the field. The CBR workers were also asked to identify their most pressing learning needs in different areas of CBR Matrix.

This study shows that CBR Matrix can be a useful framework to understand field-level activities in CBR projects. The study has identified a number of priority learning needs, in terms of different domains of CBR Matrix, and in terms of different disabilities. It also shows that globally, areas related to advocacy, lobbying, legal protection and rights-based approach, are the most important learning needs identified by CBR workers.

"This report reviews the Human Resources for Health (HRH) status in the targeted countries by mainly focusing on health education and training, distribution and retention of health workers, community health workers. Eighteen countries have been included in the report: Bangladesh; Cambodia; China; Fiji; India; Indonesia; Lao PDR; Myanmar; Nepal; Philippines; Papua New Guinea; Samoa; Sri Lanka; Thailand; Vietnam; Australia; New Zealand and Mongolia"