The Forthcoming 51st Session of the Commission for Social Development in February in the United Nations, New York

(--> A Nordic disability meeting held in Helsinki on 9th January)

The Rapporteur is going to present his annual report in the forthcoming 51st Session of the Commission for Social Development to be held between 6 – 15^th February 2013 in New York. His presentation is expected at around 3 pm on 8^th February. He will present his activities during the last year and highlight the establishment process of the African Disability Forum including the experts consultative meeting held in the end of November 2012 that endorsed the idea of establishment. (The outcome document of the meeting will be uploaded soon). The experts meeting also concluded with recommendations to the forthcoming High-level Meeting on disability and development to be held on 23^rd September 2013. This is in line with the message of the UN Secretary General for the last few years. The inputs from Africa will be delivered to wider audience via the Rapporteur’s presentation, which is an important contribution of the Rapporteur.

After the Rapporteur’s statement in the Session of the Commission for Social Development, the Nordic countries are making a joint-statement to concretely contribute towards consensus on disability and human rights inclusive post-2015 agenda*. Nordic disability meetings have been arranged throughout the years involving both DPOs and Ministerial government officials in charge of disability and development. This year, Finland hosted this meeting on 9^th January in Helsinki. The meeting has led to this joint-statement to be presented in the forthcoming Commission. Hopefully many initiatives around the world including the position paper of IDA and IDDC as well as the oral speech of the Rapporteur will bring disability to the surface of the Commission discussion towards inclusive post-2015 agenda. 

* On 1st February, I heard from the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs that the joint-statement was postponed as the governments of Nordic countries needed more time for it.

Initiative to Establish an African Disability Forum

The Rapporteur took the initiative to establish an African Disability Forum and has consulted with various African disability stakeholders to exchange ideas and to solicit this idea towards the establishment of the ADF. He mentioned this idea in his annual reports to the United Nations for the last few years and will do that again when he presents his annual report in the 51st Session of the Commission for Social Development of the United Nations in February in New York.

I had the opportunities to accompany the Rapporteur’s missions to Addis Ababa in April 2012 and New York in September 2012. During these missions he met key stakeholders for the establishment including the African Decade secretariat staff members, a number of African DPOs (organiastions of persons with disabilities) and Federations, IDA (International Disability Alliance), the African Union, UN agencies (UNDESA, UNDP, UNICEF, UNECA, and WHO etc.), bi-lateral donors (USA, Finland, and Sweden), academics among others. For instance in his New York Mission, he attended three conferences to make a number of presentations and speeches, and had 16 personal meetings during his one week stay.

It is envisaged that the ADF would be a multi-stakeholder forum of continental, sub-regional and national federations of DPOs that would primarily aim at capacity building of disability stakeholders in Africa through information dissemination and research particularly during the initial stage. Information available at an international level had many times failed to reach at African disability stakeholders including the Rapporteur himself. Such information dissemination initiated by the Forum is expected to increase capacity of disability stakeholders. Everybody the Rapporteur talked on this Forum was in the same opinion that lack of information is one of the major challenges in Africa.

An experts consultative meeting was held on 28-29 November 2012 in Addis Ababa and endorsed the idea to establish an African Disability Forum. It was decided in the meeting that an Interim Working Group would be called upon in which 10 African disability leaders will voluntarily (without any monetary compensation) discuss upon proposals on the organizational structure, membership, priority areas, and fundraising possibilities towards the formal establishment of the ADF.

The Initiative of the Rapporteur has finally reached to this point after many, many meetings during the last few years. This year is going to be very exciting for the ADF. The Rapporteur will use a lot of his time and efforts for the establishment of the ADF along with his other mandate in 2013.