Commitment 1: Inclusive Education
1.1. Based on SDG 4 (“Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”), aim to make all World Bank-funded education projects/programs disability-inclusive by 2025.
Time frame and/or implementation plan: Until 2025 to ensure that all education projects/programs are disability-friendly.
1.2 The World Bank welcomes the opportunity to host the Inclusive Education Initiative (IEI), with support from DFID and NORAD, which will provide our clients with the technical expertise and resources necessary to accelerate progress in serving children with disabilities and exploring innovative, inclusive pedagogies and learning environments with new ways to advance education.
Duration and/or implementation plan: 3 years.
1.3. In its private sector projects, IFC is committed to promoting an inclusive agenda that includes an appropriate environment that provides equal opportunities and non-discrimination for persons with disabilities (including physical, learning, sensory and emotional). IFC’s education team, with input from the World Bank, aims to develop principles for education investment that will help advance the inclusion and non-discrimination agenda in the education sector, complementing other relevant focus areas such as gender, race, ethnicity, language and harassment, and will also include specific reference to the inclusion of persons with disabilities.
Duration and/or implementation plan: 2 years.
Commitment 2: Technology and Innovation
2.1. In line with SDG 9, all digital development projects will be reviewed to ensure they are disability-sensitive, including through the use of universal design and accessibility standards.
Duration and/or implementation plan:
Achieving inclusion and empowerment of people with disabilities requires change and innovative solutions to remove structural barriers. Innovation and technology offer unprecedented opportunities in this regard, especially for people with disabilities, children with disabilities and the many people with invisible disabilities who experience marginalization.
Social innovation can act as a powerful tool to break trends and increase awareness, access and availability of opportunities for marginalized groups. Innovative approaches are central to realizing the SDGs for all. Information and Communications Technology (ICT)-enabled services and resources are often key elements of development projects, including efforts to promote access to banking, expand health, education and income generation, strengthen disaster response and management, and access to government-related services. ICT makes previously inaccessible forms of written and oral communication available to all. Different communication modes can improve the functional capabilities of persons with disabilities in an affordable manner.
2.2. IFC will explore efforts to accelerate adoption of assistive technology in emerging markets. IFC and DFID have agreed to fund a feasibility study to understand how to most effectively accelerate the adoption of assistive technology in emerging markets. IFC will also introduce an assistive technology awards category as part of the Financial Times/IFC Transformative Business Awards to bring more attention to this challenge.
Duration and/or implementation plan: 1 year.
Commitment 3: Data Disaggregation
Commit resources to support enhanced disability data. Building on the World Bank’s household survey strategy to address data gaps, the World Bank Group will provide technical assistance and analytical support to client countries in their efforts to collect and effectively use disability data from future national surveys and censuses, aligned with global standards and best practices, including the Washington Group’s simplified disability question. The World Bank Group will provide project staff with clear, publicly available guidelines on disability data collection based on the Washington Group’s disability question and provide appropriate advice to client countries.
Duration and/or implementation plan:
In the short and medium term, the World Bank Group will work with countries to:
Review and establish a baseline for disability data in existing household surveys and censuses. Include the Washington Group abbreviated disability question in all 2020 round censuses supported by the World Bank Group through loans and TA. Incorporate the Washington Group abbreviated disability question in at least 12 countries by 2020 in future World Bank Group-supported household surveys. Aim to use the Washington Group abbreviated disability question in at least 50% of World Bank Group-supported household surveys in low- and middle-income countries from 2021 onwards. Provide technical assistance to encourage all countries working with the World Bank Group to collect household surveys to use the Washington Group abbreviated disability question as the default. The World Bank Group will revise its household survey guidance to recommend the Washington Group abbreviated disability question as a best practice for collecting data to disaggregate by disability. Additionally, the World Bank Group will encourage surveys not supported by the World Bank Group to collect disability data using the Washington Group abbreviated question set. Include disability profiles in publications such as poverty assessments and poverty and equity briefs as data become available. This makes this invisible aspect more visible in all the activities we undertake.
In the longer term, we will also build administrative systems for collecting disability data and work to mainstream an inclusive data agenda in all the countries we support.
Commitment 4: Women and girls with disabilities
The World Bank Group is committed to exploring opportunities to increase its focus on the economic empowerment of women and girls with disabilities.
Duration and/or implementation plan:
The World Bank-run Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) creates a unique opportunity to comprehensively address the full range of barriers faced by women entrepreneurs in developing countries. Future We-Fi funding offers the opportunity to address policy and regulatory frameworks, design projects with a gender and disability lens in the transport and ICT sectors, and develop and deploy new products, such as disability insurance, with a more intentional focus on the economic empowerment of women and girls with disabilities. The next Women, Business and Law Survey, which will feed into a dataset on laws and regulations that limit women’s economic opportunities, will include questions about laws and protections for women with disabilities.
Commitment 5: People with disabilities in humanitarian situations
Funding projects for public facilities in post-disaster recovery efforts will include people with disabilities by 2020.
Timeframe and/or implementation plan: By 2020, incorporate universal access features into the design.
Commitment 6: Transportation
By 2025, all new urban transit and rail projects that support public transport services will be designed to incorporate key universal access features for people with disabilities and mobility limitations.
Equity considerations, including access for people with disabilities, strive to remain at the forefront of the Sustainable Mobility for All initiative (SuM4All), which is currently developing a Global Roadmap with over 50 transport stakeholders from around the world. Under the Universal Access theme (one of five themes), the Roadmap will propose actionable recommendations on disability access.
Road crashes are one of this century’s biggest public health issues, causing death and disability, and so we call for improved road safety. This initiative is led by the Global Road Safety Facility, which provides funding, knowledge, policy guidance, technical assistance and research to leverage road safety investment in transport and health services. New funding from DfiD and DHSC (UK Department of Health and Social Care) has been provided to support a specific research programme on road injury.
Commitment 7: Private Sector
Strengthening due diligence for private sector projects. IFC will look at ways to strengthen due diligence on disability inclusion, including encouraging clients to adopt Good International Industry Practices on Disability Inclusion and Access (GIIP). IFC will also work with CDC/DFID to develop a good practice note on DI.
Duration of enhanced due diligence-related efforts: 18 months.
Commitment 8: Social Security
By 2025, three-quarters (75%) of social protection projects will target people with disabilities.
Commitment 9: Staffing
Increase the number of staff with disabilities at the World Bank Group. The World Bank currently follows a process for voluntary disclosure of staff with disabilities. The World Bank is committed to proactively recruiting and retaining staff with disabilities and improving accessibility, services, and inclusion.
Commitment 10: Disability inclusion and accountability framework
Promote the Disability Inclusion and Accountability Framework among World Bank staff as a way of supporting the World Bank Group’s new Environmental and Social Framework (ESF).
For more information about the World Bank Group’s disability inclusion work, visit worldbank.org/disability