12.04.2017 Disability, Development and Data – The Triple D in the Arab Region
Hosted by the United Nation’s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN ESCWA), I had the pleasure to represent CBM at the”Expert Group Meeting on the ESCWA Publication entitled Disability in the Arab Region 2017“. This meeting took place on 11th and 12th of April in Beirut and had the objective of making inputs into a publication on the situation of persons with disabilities in the Arab Region, a publication UN ESCWA is planning to release on December 3rd this year. More specifically, the publication will be looking at the latest developments regarding the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, its linkages to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), as well as at models of social protection in the region.
My role was to give a global perspective on the linkages between the 2030 Agenda and the CRPD and to present the work that CBM has been doing in that area over the last years. In addition to sharing a number of concrete text changes to the draft publication, I was very pleased to see that CBM’s work was already quite well known by many participants: The two pieces of work, the infographic on the linkages between the CRPD and the SDGs as well as our publication on sustainable development were often quoted by speakers, in addition to being brought to the table by me.
One session was devoted to the subject of data and statistics on disability. That session highlighted, once again, that there is still a great deal of confusion about what to measure, what methodology to use etc. At the same time, it also clearly brought forward the willingness to work across different countries of the region, in a view to find a harmonised approach and in order to learn from each other.
All in all, it struck me that there was a very high turn-out at the meeting of Governmental representatives. This underscores a good degree of political will to further the rights of persons with disabilities in the Arab Region and CBM was often mentioned as a key actor to help make that happen!