The Global Disability Summit: Our expectations and our commitments

Blog | January 16, 2024

The Global Disability Summit (GDS) is a week away. Held virtually, the summit will bring together governments, civil society, and other stakeholders to mobilise efforts towards the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and to ensure no one is left behind in development and humanitarian efforts. It will also place an emphasis on what efforts are needed to build back better due to the impact of COVID-19 and the resulting inequalities persons with disabilities around the world face.

Four expectations we have for the Summit

For 2022, we are keen to see commitments emerge that place the participation of OPDs as a top priority in all development and humanitarian efforts. As the world slowly emerges from a global pandemic and recognising that some parts of the world are still gripped by it, we want to see the summit deliver on:

1. Increased financial commitments by government for implementing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in all sectors, e.g. health, social protection, humanitarian, community inclusion. We would expect financial commitments to include measures to support capacity building, growth, and leadership of OPDs.
2. Commitments to accelerate the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development ensuring a disability inclusive approach to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Investments that reach persons with disabilities living in poverty are critical. We would expect to see commitments to accelerate progress in health, community mental health, social protection, livelihoods, and poverty reduction efforts that are inclusive of persons with disabilities.
3. Clear measures to ensure persons with disabilities and their representative organisations are included in policy review and development processes. The pandemic and the on-going crisis the world faces in climate, conflict, and food security, all require important policy decisions and OPDs should be at the decision making table and involved in the co-production of policies. General comment no 7 from the CRPD committee provides guidance on this.
4. Commitments to ensure government data systems take measures to be more inclusive of persons with disabilities. Inclusive Data systems give evidence-based data on progress and also indicate where gaps exist in implementing CRPD/SDG and other commitments.

What commitments has CBM Global made to the GDS?

The GDS also welcomes commitments from international NGOs and CBM Global was eager to make some public commitments. Through late 2021 and early 2022, we went through a comprehensive process to review which commitments we will make. An important aspect for us in making our commitments was that they needed to relate to our core areas of work and be measurable, as we will hold ourselves accountable on their progress. They also needed to reflect our commitment towards authentic partnership and accountability to OPDs.

What do our GDS commitments focus on?

Our commitments focus on the core areas of work that we pursue as a Federation and the partnership distinctives that are at the heart of our strategy.

• Meaningful engagement of Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs)
• Situations of Conflict and Crisis, including a focus on Climate Change
• Inclusive Health

Our fourth area of commitment is an overarching commitment to inclusive data and relates directly to our advocacy work with OPDs for inclusive data, as this is a key priority for CBM Global’s strategic framework for advocacy, as is humanitarian, climate change, and health. You can find our commitments here. It also relates to commitments we have made under the Inclusive Data charter here.

Find out more about CBM Global at the summit here

Find out more details on our OPD enquiry here 

Click and read our core commitments to GDS in more detail here

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