There’s growing recognition that for international development to be successful and sustainable, it must include the people it impacts. But how can the sector do this in a non-tokenistic way?

Inclusive Futures’ deputy programme director, Claire Walsh, reflects on what meaningfully engaging people with disabilities looks like and how mainstream development actors can put it into practice.

Organisations of people with disabilities (OPDs) are central actors in advancing disability-inclusive development. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) establishes their unique role as representative organisations, mandated to bring the voices and lived experiences of people with disabilities into decision-making at all levels.

Despite this clear recognition, OPDs continue to face barriers to exercising leadership in mainstream development programmes. They are often confined to advocacy or consultation roles rather than being positioned as equal partners in programme design and delivery.

Doing things differently

Inclusive Futures set out to meaningfully engage with OPDs in the design, delivery and evidencing of our programme. We looked to move theory into practice and learn from doing.

The decision to share the leadership of the UK aid-funded Inclusive Futures programme between an international non-governmental organisation (INGO), Sightsavers, and an OPD, the International Disability Alliance (IDA), set the tone. To my knowledge, this is the first time a UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office commercial contract has been co-led by an INGO and OPD.

Multiplying impact

Partnership became the Inclusive Futures programme’s secret weapon. Together with our consortium and OPD partners, we helped reshape how mainstream donors and programmes approach disability inclusion, creating long-term policy changes that will address inequalities for hundreds of thousands of people:

• In Nigeria, Sightsavers partnered with FCDO’s large scale health programme, Lafiya, the Clinton Health Access Initiative and the World Bank’s IMPACT programme. We worked with OPDs to leverage commitments to enrol 56,000 people with disabilities in Kaduna state’s health insurance scheme and renovate 255 health facilities for accessibility. This combined groundswell supported Kaduna state government to sign a three-year costed implementation plan with a budget of £15.8 million, advancing sexual and reproductive health rights for 800,000 women and girls with disabilities.
• In Nepal, Humanity and Inclusion, Sense International, the National Federation for the Deaf and Chitwan Autism Society worked with local and national governments to integrate the Washington Group Child Functioning Module into the national Education Information Management System. It’s now used in over 500 municipalities.
• In Kenya, Sightsavers, Sense International, Humanity and Inclusion and OPDs from Homa Bay and Turkana secured combined commitments from county governments of over £1.8 million to build and equip 250 inclusive early childhood development centres with specialised staffing and learning materials.

Our OPD partners played a critical role in leveraging £9.7m in government funding commitments across our six programme countries. We learned that where OPDs hold a structural role rather than a consultative one, attitudes shift inside government, and county and national officials become the driving force for inclusion themselves.

Where to start

From my 17 years of experience of working for INGOs in international development, my three recommendations to others would be:

• Firstly, educate yourself on reasonable accommodation: understand what it is, why it’s important and how to implement it. Start by reading our report on inclusive budgeting. Learn how to make your documents and presentations accessible in Microsoft Office. Switch on captions during presentations. Make a commitment to send presentations out early. When you invite people with disabilities to participate, ask what type of reasonable accommodation they may need.
• Secondly, break the rules. INGOs can have tunnel vision when it comes to donor requirements and their own technical approaches, viewing partners through a lens of utility. INGOs can and should use the power they have to break the rules and benefit the disability movement. I co-authored a paper that examined lessons on power and partnership in disability-inclusive safeguarding and points to ways INGOs can go beyond compliance and be better partners to OPDs. When you involve OPDs in project decision-making, you will often take a mutually beneficial path.
• Thirdly, involve young people with disabilities in your work. We didn’t do enough of this in Inclusive Futures. It’s something Sightsavers is pushing for through its Equal World campaign, and I would like to see more efforts to support this in the future.