End the Poverty in Disability

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 SDGs provide a powerful framework to guide local communities, countries and the international community toward the achievement of disability-inclusive development. The 2030 Agenda pledges to leave no one behind, including persons with disabilities and other disadvantaged groups, and recognizes disability as a cross-cutting issue to be considered in the implementation of all of its goals. The Agenda also includes seven targets and 11 indicators explicitly referencing persons with disabilities, covering access to education and employment, availability of schools that are sensitive to students with disabilities, inclusion and empowerment of persons with disabilities, accessible transport, accessible public and green spaces, and building the capacity of countries to disaggregate data by disability.

Persons with disabilities are more likely to live in poverty than persons without disabilities due to barriers in society such as discrimination, limited access to education and employment and lack of inclusion in livelihood and other social programmes. National data on income poverty disaggregated by disability remain scarce, but available data show that the proportion of persons with disabilities living under the national or international poverty line is higher, and in some countries double, than that of persons without disabilities. Regarding food security, in developed countries, available data shows that the average percentage of persons with disabilities who are unable to afford a meal with protein every second day is almost double that of persons without disabilities. More women with disabilities than men with disabilities are in such a situation, and the gender gap between women and men in terms of access to meals with protein is wider among persons with disabilities. In developing countries, data shows that persons with disabilities and their households are more likely to not always have food to eat, than persons without disabilities and their households. While financial inclusion can help persons with disabilities out of poverty, access to financial services such as banks remains restricted by the lack of physical and virtual accessibility of these services. In some countries, persons with disabilities find that more than 30% of banks are not accessible.

Social protection programmes for persons with disabilities, which can be vital in facilitating an escape from poverty, have been adopted in many countries. At least 168 countries have disability schemes that provide periodic cash benefits to persons with disabilities, while lump-sum benefits are provided in 11 countries. In half of the countries with periodic benefits, these benefits cover mainly workers and their families in the formal economy, excluding children with disabilities and persons with disabilities who have not had the opportunity to contribute to social insurance for a sufficient period to be eligible for benefits. In 87 other countries however, schemes are fully or partially financed through taxes and have improved coverage. In only one third of these countries, schemes cover all persons with assessed disabilities regardless of their income status. In the rest of the countries, programmes cover only persons or households whose economic means fall below a certain threshold. Despite their existence, many persons with disabilities are not able to access social protection. In some countries, more than 80% of persons with disabilities who need welfare services cannot receive them. (see the full report: bit.ly/UN-report-disability-sdgs ).

Some actions to be taken to end poverty in disability

1. Design social protection policies and programmes to include persons with disabilities.

2. Remove barriers that persons with disabilities face in accessing and fully benefiting from social protection and employment on an equal basis with others.

3. Sensitize government, NGOs and community members about barriers experiencing by persons with disabilities to access employment opportunities and social protection and approaches to overcome these barriers.

4. Disaggregate data on poverty by disability status.

5. Establish national monitoring and evaluation systems that periodically assess all social protection programmes and employment regarding inclusion and impact on the situation of persons with disabilities.

6. Establish empowerment on enterpreurship and vocational skills as well as employability training skills and job opportunities for both PWDs graduates and non graduates.