General News

IDA Press Release on the InternationalDay for the Eradication of Poverty (17 October 2011)

An inclusive Social Protection Floor should combat poverty among persons with disabilities

IDA demands that more efforts need to be made to eradicate poverty and extreme poverty among persons with disabilities worldwide. The Social Protection Floor initiative can play a key role to achieve this objective.

It is widely accepted that persons with disabilities are more at risk of being in situations of poverty and extreme poverty, resulting from discrimination in many areas of life.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which outlaws all forms of discrimination on the ground of disability, includes special attention to the issue of social protection and insists that persons with disabilities need to be taken into account in all strategies to combat poverty. It also refers to the need for States to cover disability related costs in order to avoid the link between disability and poverty.

The lack of a human rights approach in the MDGs, including the goal to reduce poverty, has resulted in insufficient attention to persons with disabilities. This needs to be changed between now and 2015, and in particular, needs to be addressed in the new framework to be established for the period beyond 2015. The upcoming High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness to be held in Busan should also lead to an increased attention to the rights of persons with disabilities in international co-operation efforts, as indicated in article 32 of the CRPD. Aid cannot be effective if it is delivered without considering the rights of 15% of the world population.

IDA wants to highlight in particular the potential that the future International Labour Organisation (ILO) recommendation on a Social Protection Floor has to contribute fundamentally to the combat of poverty. โIt is imperative that this important initiative includes persons with disabilities as a key target group, and that it do so in a way that is consistent with their rightsโ, reminds IDA Chair Diane Richler.

The CRPD gives clear guidance to ensure that persons with disabilities and their representative organisations are partners in the design and implementation of all development processes, a participation that will make these processes not only more inclusive, but also more effective.

For more information:

Website of the International Disability Alliance (IDA): www.internationaldisabilityalliance.org

IDA on Facebook: www.facebook.com/InternationalDisabilityAllianceIDA

Contact: Stefan Tromel stromel@ida-secretariat.org

International Day of Extreme Poverty: http://www.un.org/depts/dhl/poverty/

UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Poverty/Pages/SRExtremePovertyIndex.aspx

Source: IDA