UN Partnership on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Six UN agencies (UNDP, OHCHR, UNICEF, WHO, ILO and UN DESA) have recently taken the decision to establish a MDTF on the rights of persons with disabilities called UN Partnership on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNPRPD). The UNPRPD MDTF was launched on 8 December 2011, in New York.

Multi Donor Trust Fund (MDTFs) are funding instruments created by two or more UN agencies to promote work on a certain issue or in a certain country. MDTFs allow for targeted funding contributions by States in complement to their contributions to the UN budget.

IDA was instrumental in the launch of this initiative. IDA will be represented on the Policy Board and Management Committee.

The priorities of the UNPRPD include:

a) Country-level Programmes

The UNPRPD MDTF will primarily support joint programmes in which Participating UN Organizations collaborate around common programmatic goals. Its focus will be on supporting programmes to develop national capacities (the development of UNCT capacities will be supported as long as it is necessary for national capacity development).

The four Thematic Priorities are:

  • Capacity development for the ratification and implementation of the CRPD;
  • Establishment or strengthening of mechanisms enhancing dialogue between States, persons with disabilities and their representative organizations and UNCTs;
  • Breaking statistical invisibility by supporting the production of relevant data on persons with disabilities and barriers to their full participation and inclusion;
  • Development and promotion of mechanisms to prevent development funds from creating or perpetuating barriers to participation and inclusion.

b) Thematic, global and regional support activities

UNPRPD will enhance the impact of the country programmes through thematic, global and/or regional activities that will focus on supporting, strengthening and providing coherent frameworks for country-level joint programmes. Regional and global activities may include, among others, areas such as policy research, exchange and study visits, and production of training curricula, guidelines and tools. Such efforts will be designed to maximize country benefits in the delivery of UNPRPD by ensuring consistency in approaches and economies of scale in the development of knowledge and capacities.

Key Thematic, Global and Regional Priorities include:

  • Research on thematic issues;
  • Technical, policy and legal advisory services;
  • Knowledge management, including collection and dissemination of good practices, production of training curricula, guidelines and tools;
  • Networking and exchange of experiences;
  • Promotion of persons with disabilities’ participation.

These activities will be coordinated with UN mechanisms dealing with rights of persons with disabilities such as the UNDG Human Rights Mechanism and the IASG.

News!

Partners meeting of the UNPRPD

On Friday 30 March, a partners meeting was held in New York of the UN Partnership on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNPRPD). The meeting, which was hosted by UNDP, was attended by a good number of missions to the UN, the six UN agencies that have established the UNPRPD (UNDP, OHCHR, UNICEF, UN DESA, WHO and ILO), as well as civil society organisations. A number of decisions were taken both related to the strategic operational framework and the work plan, including issues related to the composition of the policy board and the management committee. The next step will be to arrange a meeting of the management committee, while it is planned that the policy board will meet during the Conference of States Parties to the CRPD in September.