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.
