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This technical guidance was commissioned by the UNICEF Eastern Europe and Central Asia Regional Office to enable UNICEF Country Offices to advocate and support particular programmes and projects related to the deinstitutionalization of children with disabilities through:

• Promoting better decision-making among policy makers and child welfare professionals in the region regarding deinstitutionalization of children with disabilities;
• Supporting governments to understand the need for such work and to plan, monitor, evaluate and sustain the reforms, as well as linking these reforms to broader disability- inclusive changes across sectors and making a contribution to social justice;
• Increasing political will, passion and vision for the development of a child care system to address the range of needs of children, stimulating preventive work to reduce overall numbers placed away from home, and promoting family-based alternatives for the majority of children in the care system

The UK Department for International Development (DFID)'s vision is a world where all people with disabilities, women, men, girls and boys, in all stages of their lives, are engaged, empowered and able to exercise and enjoy their rights on an equal basis with others, contributing to poverty reduction, peace and stability. A world where no-one is left behind.

Over the next five years DFID will prioritise four strategic pillars for action: (i) inclusive education, (ii) social protection, (iii) economic empowerment, and (iv) humanitarian action. To complement this focus DFID are adopting three cross-cutting areas, vital to disability inclusion, which will be consistently and systematically addressed in all of their work: (v) tackling stigma and discrimination; (vi) empowering girls and women with disabilities; and (vii) access to appropriate assistive technology.

DFID have introduced a new set of standards for all DFID business units to meet. The standards require all country offices and departments to; review their leadership and culture, engage with people with disabilities, influence others, adapt programming and improve data and evidence.

The 3rd World Disability & Rehabilitation Conference 2018 was held from 12th and 13th November 2018 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. People with disabilities and researchers, practitioners, policy makers, industry experts, university faculty and organizations along with advocates and volunteers working with people with disabilities participated and presented their original and unpublished results of conceptual, constructive, empirical, experimental, experiential or theoretical work through abstract and poster presentation. Total 33 participants presented their abstract and poster throughout this conference. The theme of WDRC 2018 was “Global advocacy and rights of people with disabilities”

Background: Understandings of disability are rooted in contexts. Despite the world’s significant contextual diversity, postcolonial power dynamics allow influential actors from the global North to imagine that most people across the global South understand disability in one generalised way. When it informs programmes and services for persons with disabilities in the global South, this imagining of a single generalised view could reduce effectiveness while further marginalising the people for whom the programmes and services were designed.

Objectives: In the interest of better understanding a contextually grounded meaning of disability, we explored the expressed concerns of two organisations of persons with disabilities and their members in Western Zambia.

Method: In this qualitative constructionist study, data collection focused upon life with a disability and servicesavailable to persons with disabilities. Data were collected through 39 individual interviews and eight focus group discussions with 81 members of organisations of persons with disabilities. Data were analysed thematically.

Results: The participants’ main expressed concern was poverty. This concern was articulated in terms of a life of suffering and a need for material resources. Participants linked poverty to disability in two ways. Some participants identified how impairments limited resource acquisition, resulting in suffering. Others considered poverty to be an integral part of the experience of disability.

Conclusion: This study contributes to literature on disability theory by providing a contextually grounded account of a particular understanding of disability and poverty. The study also contributes to disability practice and policymaking through the demonstration of poverty as the main concern of persons with disabilities in this context.

The possibility to participate in education and lifelong learning has been introduced in EU disability policy in recent decades as one of the key means to improve the socioeconomic position of disabled persons. Simultaneously, lifelong learning has been developed as the defining concept of EU education policy to increase social cohesion and economic competitiveness. However, the education, employment rate and socioeconomic status of disabled persons have remained far below the EU average. In this article, we theo- rize governmentality to explore (1) how EU lifelong learning and disability policy discourses constitute and govern disabled persons and (2) how disabled persons are positioned in the policy dis- courses. The data consist of the most relevant EU policy documents concerning lifelong learning and disability policy in the twenty-first century. We argue that the policies constitute and govern disabled persons as a group who do not fulfil the premises set for the lifelong learner, and that consequently, policy dis- courses marginalize disabled persons instead.

The key objective of the Global Disability Summit was to deliver ambitious new global and national level commitments on disability inclusion. National governments and other organisations made 170 sets of commitments around the four central themes of the Summit (ensuring dignity and respect for all, inclusive education, routes to economic empowerment and harnessing technology and innovation), as well as the two cross-cutting themes (women and girls with disabilities and conflict and humanitarian contexts), and data disaggregation.

Commitments made can be viewed in full on: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/global-disability-summit-commitments

This 14-month exploratory research project aimed to increase the understanding of the links between disability and climate resilience, and in turn to support the delivery of policy and programme work that builds the resilience of people with disabilities to climate shocks and stresses. 

The research comprises: an extensive literature review to identify the current evidence and gaps; a global online survey to identify current practices being implemented in the field around climate change and climate-related disasters, and the extent to which disability issues are addressed in programming; policy analyses, complemented by key informant interviews with policymakers and practitioners; and focus group discussions with people with disabilities in climate-impacted areas of Bangladesh and Kenya. This report synthesises the results of the desk- and field-based research, and outlines implications of the findings for policy and programming and identifies recommendations for further action. It is hoped that the findings highlighted in this report can be extrapolated to develop more disabilityinclusive practice and will also be applicable for other contextually marginalised people

This K4D helpdesk report identifies information since 2013 concerning:

• data on the state of persons with disabilities in Lebanon
• assessments of laws on the rights of persons with disabilities in Lebanon
• analyses of the political, social, cultural, and economic context for persons with disabilities in Lebanon

Issues particular to persons with disabilities amongst Syrian refugees within these aspects are identified where possible.

The state of knowledge and gaps are discussed. 

Purpose: Persons with a developmental disability have the lowest rate of labour force participation relative to other disabilities. The widening gap between the labour force participation of persons with versus without disability has been an enduring concern for many governments across the globe, which has led to policy initiatives such as labour market activation programs, welfare reforms, and equality laws. Despite these policies, persistently poor labour force participation rates for persons with developmental disabilities suggest that this population experiences pervasive barriers to participating in the labour force.

Materials and methods: In this study, a two-phase qualitative research design was used to systematically identify, explore and prioritize barriers to employment for persons with developmental disabilities, potential policy solutions and criteria for evaluating future policy initiatives. Incorporating diverse stakeholder perspectives, a Nominal Group Technique and a modified Delphi technique were used to collect and analyze data.

Results: Findings indicate that barriers to employment for persons with developmental disabilities are multi-factorial and policy solutions to address these barriers require stakeholder engagement and collaboration from multiple sectors.

Conclusions: Individual, environmental and societal factors all impact employment outcomes for persons with developmental disabilities. Policy and decision makers need to address barriers to employment for persons with developmental disabilities more holistically by designing policies considering employers and the workplace, persons with developmental disabilities and the broader society. Findings call for cross-sectoral collaboration using a Whole of Government approach.