Global Institutions and Their Engagement with Disability Mainstreaming in the South: Development and (Dis)Connections

Abstract

With the increase of disability activism internationally, various global institutions and international development organisations have started to mainstream disability in their work, mostly at the level of rhetoric. Many have also developed disability statements and policies to guide their work. This chapter explores these developments, examining what strategies such organisations have adopted to introduce the disability strand in their work. At the same time, we provide a critique of how efforts at mainstreaming or including disability in their work are translated into practice. In the process, we expose some barriers that continue to maintain disability on the peripheries of inclusive development; and practices that sometimes may work to the detriment of disabled people’s emancipation. We also briefly critique the World Report on Disability, exploring the possibilities of it being used as a catalyst to the institutions’ disability mainstreaming efforts. We draw on additional examples emerging from Africa where we reside, in search for promising practices, where there is genuine disability mainstreaming by international agencies in trying to understand disability as an ubuntu and development agenda.