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United Nations, January 2009

Behind closed doors of psychiatric institutions in many impoverished countries, too many children and adults with mental disabilities live their lives in suffering and isolation.

In Paraguay, autistic young men like Jorge and Julio have suffered at the hands of a system that has failed to understand and protect them.

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A charming short film celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, produced by ChildFund Australia and VIAfilm.

For more info, visit www.childfund.org.au

Source: Enable. UN

The MDGs established a unifying set of developmental objectives for the global community.  Bringing together United Nations agencies, governments and civil society around eight key development issues, the MDGs foster collaborative action to reduce poverty, improve health and address educational and environmental concerns around the world’s most pressing development problems.  The MDGs are specifically designed to address the needs of the world’s poorest citizens and the world’s most marginalized populations.

The eight Millennium Development Goals

MDGs will not be achieved however if their policies, programs, monitoring and evaluation do not include persons with disabilities.  While persons with disabilities make up ten per cent of the world’s population, disability is associated with twenty per cent of global poverty according to the World Bank’s findings.  Currently, there are no references to persons with disabilities either in the MDGs themselves or in the accompanying body of guidelines and policies, programs and conferences that are part of the on-going MDG efforts.  In addition, the new revisions of the MDGs currently in process do not include persons with disabilities.

The international community needs urgently to act to mainstream disability in the MDG processes.  This requires policy makers and technical experts specifically tasked with the programming, monitoring and evaluation of current MDG programs to begin to consider disability so that the next phase of the implementation of the MDGs will include disability as an important component of its core mission.

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The present report is submitted pursuant to General Assembly resolution 63/1501.

The report focuses on the situation of persons with disabilities with respect to the realization of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and on lessons learned and synergies and complementarities achieved, based on the implementation of the World Programme of Action, the Standard Rules and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The report provides information on the situation of persons with disabilities in the context of the MDGs and the implementation of the World Programme of Action and the efforts toward mainstreaming disability in development.

The present report is divided into three sections.

1. Section I discusses the linkages between disability and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
2. Section II analyzes the situation of persons with disabilities in the context of the MDGs.
3. Section III offers conclusions and recommendations.

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