An IDA delegation, comprising the IDA Chair, Vice-Chair and Executive Director held, between 24-27 March 2013, a number of high level meetings in New York, with a particular focus on the High Level Meeting on Disability and Development that will take place on 23 September 2013 in the UN headquarters.
During these days, the IDA delegation held more than twenty meetings with a good number of Ambassadors or Deputy Ambassadors of UN Missions, as well as with top officials of UN entities. In particular IDA had a joint meeting with the Ambassadors of Philippines and Spain, the two co-facilitators of the High Level Meeting on Disability and Development (HLMDD) and also met with the two co-chairs of the Open Ended Working Group working towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Ambassadors of Kenya and Hungary.
The IDA delegation also attended a lunch meeting organized by the two co-chairs of the informal network of States friends to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), the Ambassadors of Mexico and New Zealand. This well-attended meeting was focused on the HLMDD and the Conference of States Parties to the CRPD (COP) that will take place from 17-19 July 2013. IDA Vice-Chair, Javed Abidi, insisted during this and all the meetings on the need for the HLMDD to produce a change for people with disabilities in developing countries, which comprise 80% of the world’s population of persons with disabilities.
The IDA delegation highlighted, during the meetings, the need to connect the HLMDD and the Special Summit on the MDGs that will take place on 25 September 2013, to reinforce the message that persons with disabilities need to be included in the post-2015 framework, “It is necessary that persons with disabilities are considered as a relevant stakeholder in all discussions on the post-2015 development framework” stated IDA´s Chair, Yannis Vardakastanis, after the meeting with the Ambassadors of Philippines and Spain “an ambitious HLMDD outcome document would help us to achieve this”.
During the meeting with the Executive Director of UNICEF, the IDA delegation highlighted the leadership role UNICEF is playing among UN entities on how to mainstream disability rights and shared proposals on how this could further promoted at UN system-wide level. In the meeting with the UN DESA Undersecretary General, the IDA delegation highlighted the unique opportunity provided by the HLMDD and requested the support from DESA to ensure a good presence of DPO representatives from the Global South.
Regarding the COP, the IDA delegation informed all relevant stakeholder that IDA will co-host together with DESA as in previous years the Civil Society CRPD Forum that will take place on 16 July 2013, the day prior of the start of the COP. The focus of this year’s Civil Society Forum will be on the HLMDD.
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