By Simone Galimberti*
KATHMANDU, Nepal | 30 March 2025 (IDN) — If there is a realm that struggles to get attention and is always at risk of being left out of the most important conversations at the international level, it is disability.
And yet, undeterred and determined to create lasting change, thousands of disabilities, experts, activists, and policymakers will convene in the German capital, the host of a new edition of the Global Disabilities Summit, set for April 2-3, 2025.
Will their discussions lead to some productive, tangible results? And will the lengthy preparatory work to the summit bring in changes to effectively mainstream disabilities in the global agenda?
Perhaps there is a royal from Jordan, someone who is a deeply humanitarian, who could make a difference.
The Forum, an event that is held biannually, is traditionally organized in partnership with a government of the Global North, one from the Global South and the International Disability Alliance (IDA).
This time Germany and Jordan are taking the lead.
In the days ahead of the summit, there is hope that the discussions will help the disability agenda to find a proper space within an increasingly complex and very volatile international relations.
Disability should not be seen just as a part of the development and aid sectors. It is something much bigger and transcendent. It is a cross-cutting, cross-sectoral domain in which persistent inequalities and profound gaps do manifest and where the inalienable rights of persons with disabilities are violated daily.
At the present conditions, it would be unconscionable to deny that, in many developing nations, a difficult-to-break discriminatory pattern exists and unfolds regularly. Yet it is also equally important that more industrialized countries do more to protect the rights of their citizens living with disabilities.
The urgency to act could not be less.
There are approximately billions of persons around the world affected by at least one form of disability or 15% of the world population. Despite their rights and needs, disability is still not seen as a priority.
That’s the reason why, despite the incredible efforts being made by the organizers, there is a high risk that the Global Disabilities Summit will be another missed opportunity. And, if it will be the case, it won’t be for want of action or inadequate preparations.
IDA acting as secretariat to the Forum, has been leading an enormous exercise in terms of making the upcoming proceedings as inclusive and as participatory as possible.
There have been national and regional preparatory forums and interactions all over the world.
In addition, dozens of webinars have been taking place over the last months. These exercises are ensuring that the two major outcomes of the summit, the Amman-Berlin Declaration and a youths’ centered call for action, have been shaped through a bottom-up approach.
Yet, amid an increasingly fast-paced news cycle and amid a development agenda that is being jeopardized by what politicians in the West think as “geopolitical” imperatives, the Summit might not get the due visibility.
That’s why it is indispensable to think about the future in different terms. It is not that the next editions of the GDSs should be de-prioritized and scaled back.
Far from it.
After all, this is the only global arena where the issue of disabilities is being elevated to the global stage or, at least, it is the only event that has this ambitious aim.
We need a different approach to talk about disabilities at the highest levels and to do so, we need the United Nations to step up and scale up its engagement in partnership with persons with disabilities.
Let’s start with finding creative ways to talk about disabilities.
IDA and its constituent members should be financially supported to keep working on shaping a new narrative about inclusion and diversity. This task is paramount as talking and discussing disabilities and the rights of persons living with disabilities should turned to represent the new normal.
With the right support and if the right types of partnerships are enabled, then this message can get amplified immensely across the media and from there, within the wider society.
But this undertaking can only go so far without having the right messengers. And it is here where António Guterres, the Secretary General of the United Nations, should activate his good offices to involve and engage with distinguished persons who could act as disability champions.
I believe that Prince Mired Raad Zeid Al-Hussein of Jordan, a key member of the Hashemite Royal family in Amman, could have consequential impact. If Jordan made huge strides in terms of upholding the rights of persons with disabilities, it is because of Prince Mired.
I have been watching and reading several of his speeches about disabilities and I was impressed. They were not the usual read out speeches being delivered by politicians.
I found in them passion, perseverance, and commitment. What strikes me the most is the fact that His Highness always centered his talks on issues like “political will” and he always emphasized the need to build a disability-centered type of national governances.
“When we agreed to participate in organizing the third [Global] Disability Summit, our decision was driven by political will at the highest levels to support the rights of persons with disabilities and Jordan’s ongoing efforts to achieve the best for its citizens in this regard,” the Prince said during a recent multi-regional disability summit in preparation to the GDS.
The key to implementing the Convention on the Rights of Persons Living with Disabilities, CRPD, is ensuring that disabilities permeate the policy-making process. We need institutions like the Higher Council for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (HCD), a brainchild of Prince Mired who chairs it.
The Secretary-General has one Special Envoy on Disability and Accessibility, Ms. María Soledad Cisternas Reyes, a disability expert and activist from South America.
Probably no one could do a better job than Ms. Cisterna who together with Ms. Heba Hagrass from Egypt, the Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities within the Human Rights Council, do an incredible job of safeguarding the rights of persons with disabilities within the UN system.
But, at the same time, we need to find a way to ensure that the voices of experts and activists are adequately “echoed” in the highest places of decision-making.
Prince Mired should be put in a condition to do more to support the GDS process in the future, helping it to be better linked with the United Nations system and bringing disability, inclusion, and accessibility to the global stage.
Other people could help greatly.
For example, the role of Caroline Casey, the founder of The Valuable 500 who is doing a terrific job of nudging the major corporations of the world to play a role to include persons with disabilities in the job market, should be elevated as well.
The only way to ensure that disability becomes a central issue as it should be is to find ways to help activists, campaigners and experts to break down the siloes of policymaking and have access to the leaders who shape the global agenda.
We need the right messengers and champions. Among them, Prince Mired of Jordan could greatly help the cause.
*Simone Galimberti writes about the SDGs, youth-centered policy-making, and a stronger and better United Nations.
Image credit: United Nations
