During March 2005 ministers of developed and developing countries gathered in Paris to reform customs in which aid is delivered and managed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. One of the commitments in terms of the ‘Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness’ are that donor countries base their overall support on their recipient partner’s national development strategies. National development strategies usually take the form of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). African countries receiving aid and loans from The World Bank or IMF have to develop national PRSPs with the aim to reduce poverty. Donor countries base their financial aid on national development strategies like PRSPs but these strategies are not disability inclusive in most instances. The benefits derived from such economic cooperation overall, do not reach persons with disabilities.

Inclusion of disability nationally in PRSPs is interdependent with disability inclusion internationally. Therefore, it is motivating to see international changes to include disability in economic cooperation and development. The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development adopted a disability inclusive policy in November 2006, entitled ‘Disability and Development’. From the policy, it is clear that economic cooperation in the disability sector is explicitly aligned to the national PRSP’s of developing countries. The implication is that countries that receive funding from Germany for developing the disability sector are able to link the funding to national PRSP programmes. This does not necessarily mean that those PRSPs are disability inclusive but a different path for inclusion is slowly being carved.

To understand what happens nationally when embarking on lobbying for disability inclusion in PRSPs I talked to Mr. James Mwandah, a disability activist and former parliamentarian in Uganda. The following interview gives his views of the challenges and opportunities they encountered with The Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP), Uganda’s development framework and medium term plan, which is also the country’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper.

How many disability groups were involved in the advocacy campaign and how did it all start?

-  In order to create impact almost all national Disabled Persons’ Organizations (DPOs) were involved. The umbrella DPO, the National Union of Disabled Persons of Uganda (NUDIPU), organized a workshop on PEAP to create awareness and sensitize leaders of DPOs to appreciate the need to include disability issues and disabled persons in the PRSP process. There were about 15 national and regional DPOs with about 80 to 100 participants at the workshop. At that time I was in Parliament and was Deputy Chairman of the Parliamentary Budget Committee. The Committee has a lot to do with PEAP and I realized that in the first PEAP of in 1997 and the revised PEAP of 2001 disability issues or people with disabilities were not mentioned. Interaction with donors indicated that donor assistance programs would not include disability issues unless they were specifically provided for in the PEAP. It was at this time that DPOs were mobilized to prepared for participation in the third revision of PEAP in 2004.

One of the main principals of a PRSP is that it is a country led initiative, but many development agencies and the World Bank have a certain amount of influence over the process. How did this kind of influence assist or hinder the disability sector’s participation?

- The initial advice to get disability into development co-operation was received from the country office of the World Bank in Uganda. In a meeting, a representative advised us strongly to get actively involved in PEAP. So the World Bank was quite helpful.

What did you do right and well and what will you do differently in the future?

- It was important to mobilize DPO leaders and sensitize them. The sensitization workshop was well organized and well attended by the DPO representatives. Experts in the field of PEAP and economic planning from government, the university and civil society organizations were engaged as resource persons. Indeed, at the workshop we made 25 proposals on inclusion in the various sectors. A workshop report was presented to the Minister in the presence of his relevant officials and the press attended. The Minister appreciated our intervention and promised that our recommendations would be considered when drawing up the final PEAP.

We left it at that and felt that we had played our expected role. Later when the final PEAP document was published, we noted with disappointment that apart from mentioning disability here and there, there was no explicit inclusion of our issues as we had proposed. We were lumped together with “vulnerable groups” or “disadvantaged groups” throughout the document. Next time round we need to follow up our submissions with the PEAP Secretariat and ensure that at that stage we continue to explain and try to convince them that unless disabled people are explicitly addressed in PEAP it will be difficult to eradicate poverty. We need to find a way of getting involved in the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of PEAP.

Is it worth it for the disability sector to embark on the PRSP journey or should they rather spend their resources on more manageable undertakings?

- PRSP is the planning framework on which donors base their support to the least developed countries. It is therefore very important for disabled people in those countries to use resources available to them to secure effective inclusion into these strategies. The alternative is that they will be left out and they will continue to live in poverty.  It must also be said that countries, which do not explicitly include disability may never be able to eradicate poverty.

Finally, in order to embark on an advocacy drive of this magnitude a good advocacy strategy and network are needed – did you have this?

- In our case, we had no experience at that time in advocating for inclusion in PRSP. And we did not have a very good advocacy strategy and network. Often we in the disability sector are also not very good at networking and advocacy. But we have learned a lot from the process.

This interview reflects Mr. Mwandah’s personal experiences but he acknowledges the efforts of everyone that was involved in the advocacy.

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This article was published in Human Rights Africa number 2, 2007.