The one-day meeting, co-hosted by the governments of Denmark and Ghana together with the Executive Directors of UNICEF and UN Women, took place in Copenhagen, Denmark on February 19th 2013 and was well attended by key decision-makers in governments, civil society and the UN.
The meeting, whose purpose was to review the final report of the global thematic consultation on addressing inequalities and present a statement and recommendations on how to address inequalities in the post-2015 agenda, included the presence of Mr Yannis Vardakastanis, Chair of the International Disability Alliance (IDA), who underlined that the post-2015 development goals must be based on a human rights framework incorporating non-discrimination and equality in compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD).
Although in the last years, there has been significant progress in recognizing and proactively addressing the exclusion and discrimination faced by people with disabilities, the reality is that today there is still very little presence of people with disabilities in development policies and programmes. The new framework to be established for the period post-MDGs beyond 2015 has to play a key role in addressing the inequalities, discrimination and exclusion faced by persons with disabilities in international development efforts.
‘We have three additional recommendations for the post-2015 framework” stressed Mr Yannis Vardakastanis, during the meeting “First, to have indicators on persons with disabilities in all relevant areas requiring disaggregated disability data. Secondly, decision-making processes must include persons with disabilities at each step, particularly through representative organisations of persons with disabilities (DPOs). Third, international cooperation should include persons with disabilities both through specific projects on disability rights and by ensuring that all projects financed by bilateral and multilateral agencies, are inclusive of persons with disabilities’.
Many of the participants included references to persons with disabilities in their statements, including the Executive Directors of UNICEF and UN Women. The Chair of the meeting, Mr Christian Friis Bach, Minister for Development Cooperation of Denmark, indicated in his final statement that "all sections of the society have critical roles to play if all major forms of inequality, discrimination and exclusion, including those linked to gender, disability and minority status, are to be addressed".
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