The EUD Policy Team attended the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) public hearing on the Road to the Global Disability Summit: For an EU disability-inclusive development and humanitarian action on 18 February 2025. This public hearing facilitated the exchanges of views and identification of potential commitments from the European Union ahead of the Global Disability Summit taking place on 2nd and 3rd of April 2025.
The Global Disability Summit is a unique platform where global, regional, and national stakeholders, both from States and from Organisations of Persons with Disabilities, gather and share their vision on disability inclusive development and humanitarian action. It will be the third summit, after the one in 2022 where the European Union made 16 commitments towards disability inclusive humanitarian action. 3 years later, the representatives of the European Commission’s DG ECHO and DG INTPA, of the UN Partnership on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Global Disability Fund) and of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Finland reflected upon the achievements and progress made since 2022 and identified key issues to address in the coming years. The organisations of persons with disabilities active in the field of humanitarian action shared their observations, comments and made suggestions for new commitments to the European Union representatives for the upcoming Global Disability Summit 2025.
EUD attended the public hearing and commends the efforts undertaken by the European Commission in addressing disability inclusive humanitarian action through e-learning training, disability indicators in humanitarian action projects (through the OECD disability marker), and occasional consultation with organisations of persons with disabilities. However, the EUD fully supports the EDF’s recommendations to align the Official Development Assistance with the UNCRPD, to ensure EU Aid and Investments are inclusive and accessible and to develop a disability action plan for EU External Action. The EUD strongly encourages the European Commission to include persons with disabilities and their representative organisations in humanitarian action projects in a structural way from the design to their implementation, as well as to address intersectionality in a mainstream approach in all its actions, encompassing persons with disabilities with their diverse intersecting identities.
Moreover, the EUD applauds the EESC’s strong call towards the European Commission to take a leading role by promoting disability inclusive initiatives in the humanitarian aid, as a response to the current geopolitical situation where diversity and disability inclusion are being removed from some institutions and organisations’ agendas. The EUD agrees with Ms. Nadia Hadad, the EDF representative’s final words that the EU must step up while other leaders are failing.
This public hearing is one of the public events the EESC organises on a regular basis, facilitating exchanges between the EU institutions, civil society, including organisations of persons with disabilities, and any relevant stakeholders. From now on, the EESC committed to render its public events related to disability issues, to be fully accessible with in-person International Sign interpretation to ensure high quality accessibility for deaf people on-site and online when the event is hybrid.
