Mainstream international development must place people with disabilities at a higher priority in order to help secure bright futures for the likes of eight-year-old Babul.

Millennium Development Goals

2010 is a critical year for the international community's efforts to make poverty history:
With five years to go until the deadline for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and with a major UN Summit planned for September 20 - 22 which will review the MDGs, this is the year that promises need to be turned into action.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are a global initiative to combat extreme poverty across the world. The aim of the MDGs is to make sure that human development reaches everyone, everywhere. There are eight goals to be achieved by 2015 and they include targets on income poverty,
education and disease. Good progress has already been made but many groups of socially-excluded people are missing out and some global issues are being marginalised.  Sightsavers does not want health issues or disabled people to be excluded from this global progress. We are advocating for three key issues to be
prioritised within the MDGs:

1. Include disabled people in international development:
• Disabled people account for 1 in 5 of the world's poorest.
• Mortality for disabled children is as high as 80%.
• Disabled women are multiply disadvantaged, experiencing exclusion on account of both their gender and their disability, and are particularly vulnerable to abuse.

However disability is not mentioned in any of the eight MDGs or in the targets set out to achieve these Goals. The inclusion of people with disabilities is a significant gap, and one that will seriously undermine efforts to achieve the MDGs. To ensure that the MDGs reach disabled people, Sightsavers believes that government and development partners should sign and implement the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD). We also believe that people with disabilities and disabled people's organisations (DPOs) should be included in planning and implementing development policies and programmes at international and national
levels.

2. Include all children in quality primary and secondary education:

It is estimated that a third of the 72 million children currently out of school are disabled and that 90% of disabled children in developing countries do not go to school. Making education more responsive to the needs of disabled children is now one of the most pressing concerns if universal primary education by 2015 is to be
achieved. Sightsavers believes that governments and development partners should tackle the barriers faced by disabled children and ensure that education systems promote accessibility, affordability and an inclusive learning environment.

3. Include the neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in the MDGs:

NTDs such as trachoma and river blindness, are a group of diseases with extremely high prevalence in developing countries affecting 1.4 billion people. They are a critical reason why some of the world's poorest people cannot escape poverty, particularly in rural communities across Africa. However, the MDG targets for health specifically focus on HIV/AIDS and Malaria and only 0.6% of development assistance for health is allocated to NTDs. Sightsavers has been advocating with governments to ensure that NTDs are included in
the MDG health targets and to encourage support for the roll out of sustainable strategies for control and/or elimination of most of these diseases.

Find Out More

 

Act Now - Keep Ireland's Aid Promise

related info

 

• Word & PDF Docs
• Dochas position paper on disability & the MDGs
• Sightsavers' MDGs policy briefing