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This policy paper outlines the barriers and exclusion experienced by women and girls with disabilities, and recommends ways that development actors can better support women with disabilities to lead. There are case studies from Vanuatu, Cambodia, India.

"Strengthening the Role of Women with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action: A Facilitator’s Guide" was designed by the Women’s Refugee Commission, in collaboration with organizations of women with disabilities in Africa and South Asia. It is a tool to support women leaders to provide training to members, colleagues and/or partners on humanitarian action. The training is intended to enhance the capacity of women with disabilities to effectively advocate on women’s and disability issues within relevant humanitarian forums at national and regional levels by:
- increasing understanding of the humanitarian system;
- helping participants identify gaps and opportunities for inclusion of women and girls with disabilities within the humanitarian system; and,
- developing advocacy plans to strengthen access and inclusion.

The Women’s Refugee Commission is deeply grateful to the women with disabilities who provided input and feedback after participating in the pilot training, as well as the Network of African Women with Disabilities, the African Disability Alliance, South Asia Disability Forum, and Special Talent Exchange Program in Pakistan, with which we have had an ongoing partnership in this wider project.

"This report maps the situation of persons with SBH in relation to healthcare access and is a follow up of the CRPD Concluding Observations Art.25. Through a comprehensive survey, IF collected valuable data on the experiences, satisfaction, and perceptions of healthcare coverage of individuals with SBH across Europe. Based on its findings, the financial coverage of treatment and assistive products for patients with SBH is grossly insufficient across the EU. Europe as a whole lacks multidisciplinary care and specialised SBH teams, which translates into long waiting times and insufficient knowledge of the SBH specificities. 

Considering these findings, IF urges the EU Member States to adequately support the healthcare needs of persons with SBH, and to invest more substantially into creating multidisciplinary clinics that can help avoid preventable complications 11 and may reduce the overall burden 12 on the patient and the system. In addition, the Member States should actively support creation of the European Reference Networks as a way of improving care for persons with SBH. IF also calls on the European institutions for support in training medical professionals on rights of persons with disabilities."

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development provides global opportunity and obligation to work towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for all women and girls, and address the rights and demands of women with disabilities as a matter of priority. This brief underlines the need to mainstream disability into all efforts to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment (SDG 5); highlights key issues for ending poverty (SDG 1) and ensuring healthy lives (SDG 3) for women and girls with disabilities; and calls for closing data gaps on gender and disability.

The brief provides the following at a glance facts about women and girls with disabilities:

• One in five women live with a disability globally
• An estimated one in four households has a person with disabilities
• Women are more likely than men to become disabled throughout the course of their lives
• Women comprise up to three-quarters of persons with disabilities in low and middle-income countries
• Prevalence of disability is higher among marginalised populations and people in rural areas.

This report highlights existing key evidence on the relationship between disability and HIV. It discusses the concrete steps needed for a person-centred, disability-inclusive HIV response that allows for increased participation of people with disabilities and integrates rehabilitation within the continuum of HIV care.

This volume of the African Disability Rights Yearbook is divided into four sections presenting articles, country reports, commentaries on regional developments and a book review. The first section A of the journal presents a number of articles on issues affecting people with disabilities in Africa, ranging from education and rights of children with disabilities to albinism. Section B presents country reports on Djibouti and Madagascar. Section C presents two articles: one on mental health and the other on disability rights developments in the East African Community post-2012. Finally a review of E. Barnes’s 2016 book "The minority body: A theory of disability" is given.

Activities to promote the access of deafblind women and girls to sexual and reproductive health are reported via brief descriptions of what happened, what changed and what worked. Activites included: training the deafblind women in their rights;training relatives of deafblind women, giving advice on general care, as well as highlighting the importance of supporting their sexual and reproductive health choices and promoting family planning; tackling the issue of the forced sterilization; awareness raising via newspapers and radio and improving livelihoods.

This report is the output of a project titled “Advocating for Change for Persons with disabilities in South and South-east Asia” which was implemented by Handicap International for the period January 2013 – June 2014. In Bangladesh, the project supported Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs) in 17 districts across the country, developing their capacity to advocate for rights of people with disabilities in education and employment. This report has been compiled to showcase good practices collected by DPOs and to promote practical recommendations, based on local evidence, on how to include people with disabilities in employment and education systems in Bangladesh. The Making it Work methodology was used as part of this project.

This report includes the 11 validated good practices including

• to ensure access of people with disabilities to waged employment n factories
• to ensure waged employment of people with disabilities though the Chamber of Commerce and Industries
• to ensure access to start up capital for people with disabilities
• to use local initiative to create educational opportunities for children with disabilities
• to ensure access of students with disabilities to secondary education through social mobilisation by school authorities
• to ensure access of children with disabilities to inclusive primary education
• to ensure physical accessibility for children with disabilities in high schools
• to ensure free of cost High School education for children with disabilities

Purpose: The aim of this study was to review peer-reviewed literature on the roles and functions of Disabled Peoples’ Organisations (DPOs) in low and middle-income countries, and their outputs and outcomes for people with disabilities.

Method: Online databases were searched without date or language limiters (Medline, CINAHL, Scopus, Embase and Cochrane), using a combination of two key word search strategies. Eleven studies were selected for inclusion in this review on the basis of predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Included studies underwent quality assessment using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) and Downs and Black’s criteria for quality assessment. Data for thematic analysis was then grouped under the broad themes of: participation and factors that facilitate participation; development of partnerships and connections; and self-development and self-help.

Results: There was some evidence within the included studies to suggest that DPOs can produce significant, positive outcomes for persons with disability in terms of factors such as employment rates, access to microfinance and bank loans, accessibility of housing, acquisition of orthopaedic devices, involvement in civil society, development of friendships and networks, and participation in training programmes. Although the studies under review largely did not investigate the long-term impact of the reported DPO functions and outputs, some of the short-term outputs may be considered proximal indicators of outcomes such as increased empowerment and wellbeing.

Conclusion: The 11 studies in this review suggested that DPOs can be effective in achieving their stated aims of promoting wellbeing, participation and rights of people with disabilities in low and middle- income countries.