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FCDO disability update: Progress against DFID’s strategy for Disability Inclusive Development

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Govt. UK
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Executive Summary

Since its publication we made great progress against DFID’s Disability Inclusion Strategy – thanks to high level commitment, staff enthusiasm and the advice of people with disabilities. Whilst we are in a relatively early stage of a long-term process and there is much more to learn and deliver – there are encouraging signs of progress for FCDO to build on.
On top of delivery against the strategy, we have adapted and surged our support to focus on new priority areas. COVID-19 in particular provided unprecedented challenges which teams across DFID rose to, pivoting policy and programming to provide critical support to people with disabilities.
Unfortunately, this meant we had to pause some deadlines, including our systematic assessment of the standards so as not to detract from ongoing COVID-19 responses – even though many country offices and central departments had made substantial progress towards the standards.
This report documents some of that progress. It is not fully comprehensive of everything achieved by DFID and FCO in the past few years but gives a flavour of the breadth and depth of work.

Progress on Priority Areas

We have seen considerable progress across our four strategic pillars for action, for example:

  • On inclusive education, our programmes are helping children with disabilities attend school and learn. Most notably, our flagship education programme, the Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC) Transition Fund, is supporting more than 100,000 girls with disabilities.

  • On social protection, we are delivering disability inclusive systems across the spectrum of social protection – such as in Myanmar, where a series of four projects provided a mix of labour market interventions, social assistance, and cash transfers for 7,800 people with disabilities.

  • On economic empowerment, we have mobilised job opportunities, addressed barriers to employment and more. For example, DFID partnered with the Kenya Commercial Bank to include 1,200 people with disabilities in their youth entrepreneurship programme.

  • On humanitarian action, we have focussed first on the disproportionate lack of data in this area. Our top achievement here has been the design, delivery and dissemination of new e-learning on how to use the Washington Group Questions in humanitarian settings.

Cross-cutting Areas

  • On Stigma & Discrimination, we are testing innovative interventions to reduce negative norms under our flagship Disability Inclusive Development programme.

  • On Assistive Technology (AT), our two major initiatives are progressing well. We have doubled our investment in the AT2030 programme and will now reach 15 million with AT.

  • On gender and disability, we have put funding and focus into large scale initiatives, to better understand, include and empower women and girls with disabilities.
    We have also stepped-up on mental health for all. Most notably, we have published a full Approach Paper and Theory of Change to provide global direction on this oft-neglected area.

Progress on Mainstreaming

We are continuing to encourage and support business units to deliver on the standards, and there is clear evidence that considerable progress took place across DFID.

  • On our approach and culture, all offices appointed a disability champion to lead work on this agenda across the organisation. We have a network of 65 champions pushing for disability inclusion, who have dedicated time and responsibility for progress here.

  • On engagement and empowerment of people with disabilities, we have stepped up efforts. In Afghanistan DFID co-ordinated three roundtables with local Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs)1 and supported the government to build their capacity.

  • On influencing, we are ensuring the ambitious commitments from the Global Disability Summit are delivered. The first self-reporting survey showed that 85% of commitments were already completed or underway. A second survey has now launched.

  • On programming, the UK was one of the first donors to implement a policy marker, allowing us to track how many programmes are supporting people with disabilities.
    This tells us there was a 36% rise in the number of programmes marked as disability inclusive from 2017-2020.

  • On data, evidence and learning, we are increasing the number of programmes that disaggregate by disability. We also launched the Disability Inclusion Helpdesk in 2019, which has already delivered 43 evidence and technical queries for teams across DFID and the FCO.

Lessons Learnt

We learnt a lot in the first 18 months of delivery, and we continue to adapt our approach according to feedback from colleagues and advice from OPDs. Lessons learned include:

  • For this kind of cultural change, incentives are critical, and given competing demands it is important to explain the benefits of inclusion and provide practical support and expertise.

  • Strong leadership is imperative. As well as top down leadership the role of disability champions has been critical in spearheading change right across the organisation.

  • There is benefit in joining voices across the inclusion agenda, sharing lessons and collectively making the case to leave no-one behind.
    Looking ahead, the creation of FCDO provides the opportunity to amplify our voice on disability with more partners and across a wider stage, to use international events to maximise momentum and to share learning, including towards reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Inclusion, diversity and belonging is at the heart of the new department and FCDO will build on the previous approaches to ensure we live our values.
    COVID-19 has underscored that now is the time to take action, placing us at what the UN Deputy Secretary General calls a ‘watershed moment’ for disability inclusion; where we must embed inclusion into the COVID-19 response and recovery to build back better than before.