Six steps to improve lives of people with disability in Bangladesh: Report

A new report has been released to help development projects around the world be more inclusive and beneficial for people with disabilities, including Bangladesh, stated a press release.

“Driving change: six principles for inclusive development” has been released by the Inclusive Futures consortium, led by Sightsavers and the International Disability Alliance (IDA). It features six game-changing principles which put experiences and theory into action and aim to transform the lives of millions of people with disabilities.

"By adopting our six principles in your work, you could help change the lives of millions of people with disabilities. If not, many will continue to be trapped in poverty," said Amrita Rejina Rozario, country director at Sightsavers Bangladesh.

"To drive change at the scale needed to reach up to 16 per cent of the world’s population, we now need professionals working across the global development sector to put what we’ve learned into practice."

From 2019 to 2023, the Inclusive Futures consortium – which is made up of 20 development and disability rights organisations – implemented 12 projects in Bangladesh, Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria, and Tanzania, gathering evidence on what succeeds, what falls short, and underlying reasons, in order to create inclusive development programmes.

Drawing on the lessons learned from this extensive on-the-ground experience, the consortium has formulated the six key principles to help transform the way the development sector approaches disability inclusion.

The six principles outlined in the report cover a range of challenges and issues, including how to challenge negative stereotyping and stigma, ensuring accurate and context-specific data to inform all work, and ensuring people with disabilities are involved in and influence projects at every stage.

In full, they are: be ambitious – build inclusion into every phase; if it’s not working – change it!; shatter stereotypes and break down barriers; collect precise data and track your spending; capture changes and tell your story; and, Don’t try to do it alone – form partnerships.

In Bangladesh, the Inclusive Futures consortium has been working alongside local Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) and communities to put these principles into practice.

"Together, these principles establish a solid foundation for effective advocacy, community building, and systemic change in the realm of disability inclusion,” said Rokeya Begum, general secretary at SPONDON Protibondhi Unnayon Sangstha, an organisation working with Sightsavers on a project supporting children with disabilities to access inclusive education in the Narshingdi and Sirajganj districts of Bangladesh that applies the principles.

“If NGOs and service providers widely adopt these principles, they would profoundly and positively impact our work as an OPD and the broader disability inclusion and rights movement,” Rokeya Begum added.

With the International Day of Persons with Disabilities to be marked on 3 December, the release of the ‘Driving Change’ report comes at a critical time, as the global development sector works to fulfil the mandates of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Sustainable Development Goals, which explicitly recognise the importance of disability inclusion. Yet, significant barriers to equal participation for people with disabilities persist worldwide.