BOND International Development Disability Day

Speech by Malcolm Bruce delivered to Methodist Central Hall on Mon 3rd Dec 2007

It has been sobering to listen to Graham Teskey (Head of Governance and Social development, DFID) and Isaac Kute (ADD, Chief executive). There is a book that has recently been published by Paul Colliers "The Bottom Billion". It talks about how to reach the billion poorest people in the world and deliver development. When you hear there are 600 million disabled people in the world and that 20% of the world's population is disabled, you wonder how many people in that bottom billion are actually disabled. A significant proportion of the world's poorest people are disabled people.

I do not wish to direct any criticism to Graham Teskey, but one needs to acknowledge that mainstreaming disability issues in development policy and in practice is a challenge. I'm delighted to hear that the "How To Notes", recently published by DFID, provide practical guidance to country programmes as to how to include the needs of people with disabilities in their work. Despite a majority of the world's population being women, it is difficult enough to mainstream gender into programmes! How much more difficult is it to prioritise disabled people? One should look at the West first before looking at developing countries, to see how far we have to go.

I got involved in issues surrounding deafness because my daughter was born deaf 30 years ago. I was confronted with something I did not know about and had not previously had to deal with. Over the 30 years that I have known her, and witnessed the challenges she has faced, I have learnt a lot about the obstacles facing people with disabilities. There is little recognition of the skills or the potential people with disabilities have. It is hard to find jobs and, if they do, hard to find work which is appropriate to their level of skill and experience. It is difficult to access professional training, etc.

There are many other obstacles. For profoundly deaf people, for example, recognition and access to sign language is frankly abysmal! I have been campaigning on this issue for 30 years, 25 of them as an MP, and we have made little progress. In fact, I wonder if we are going backwards! There is official recognition, and substantial financial support for minority languages such as Welsh and Gaelic. It is well known that a lot more people use sign language than Gaelic, yet, Gaelic receives millions of pounds a year to support its use and promotion. Sign language actually receives no direct support.

If it's challenging being disabled in a country like the UK how much more difficult is it in the Democratic Republic of Congo or another developing country where challenges arising from disability are compounded by poverty and, for many, the struggle for subsistence? Many disabilities in these contexts are acquired because of the state of the country and because of poverty.

The key Millennium Development Goals are about delivering maternal health and education, tackling diseases and building up health services. These are institutions which are required to support disabled people and their inclusion. If you are in a country where people are living on less than a dollar a day, what is the possibility of you being able to acquire and afford necessary hearing aids? What's the chance of a wheelchair? What's the chance even of spectacles when these actually cost more than individuals earn in a year? What is the chance of competing with people who are poor but not disabled for those resources which are disproportionately expensive?

These arguments underline the huge importance of including the needs of people with disabilities into the development strategy. I hope Graham would agree with me, we don't talk in the UK so much about overseas aid, as overseas development, and rightly so. Aid is like sticking plasters or for an emergency. But the real objective is to support people in their own countries to help themselves, so they can ultimately deliver these services themselves. It is crucial to involve organisations representing disabled people in developing countries to identify their needs and their aspirations to find out how international development processes can build them in to the establishment of systems that are needed for the whole Community.

The International Development Select Committee is currently looking into maternal health. One of the privileges of being on such a committee is that you are confronted with lots of information you wouldn't necessarily find out about unless you chose to go looking for it. When you are told that over half a million women a year in developing countries die in childbirth, it is difficult to understand. Of course, and this is relevant to today's discussion, for every one who dies there are probably many who survive but are disabled in some way. Many children are also born disabled as a consequence of poor maternal health, new-born health services, malnutrition, lack of support, etc. So, it's a vicious spiral where poverty and disability are interdependent.

I think having an event like this today confronting the argument that disability should be built into the development strategy is important. What I would say to you is do not consider it special pleading; it isn't special pleading its essential! If the objective is to make poverty history then supporting disabled people is essential to achieving this. Some of the poorest people in the world are disabled, if they are not included in programme work then, by definition, you are not attempting to make poverty history. You are guaranteeing that poverty will continue to be a reality for people with disabilities. I believe there are ways of including people with disabilities. The challenge to you and all your partners in other countries is to identify and prioritise those things which would best support disabled people and their inclusion in society.

If I come back to the personal anecdote of my daughter, she is 30 years old now, and has a digital hearing aid, she has a computer, a phone, a textphone, and has means of communication. These have helped her, they haven't solved everything or fixed her communication challenges but they have assisted her. And how much did that cost our society? We have to ensure those benefits are spread as widely as possible. We have to recognise, and this is exactly the point I think Graham was making, that we are talking directly to disabled people, that disabled people are allowed to speak for themselves, and that they are integrally included in international programme work. I regularly visit DFID country offices as part of my work as Chair of the Select Committee, and I will make a point of asking them how they are building disability into their work.

I would like to say, just in case anybody thinks I'm levelling criticism here, I have been to more than a dozen, 15 I think, DFID country programmes in the last 18 months. The work that DFID staff do, I can honestly say, is something this country can be inordinately proud of. They do a wonderful job and do it with huge dedication and relatively small numbers. But they also have a huge challenge. You can't be entirely surprised then that on occasions knowing which issues to prioritise is difficult. I think we have to help them to make sure that disability is one of these priorities. I'm quite sure that Graham is making damn sure that they do and, for my part, I will ask them how they are getting on when I'm next visiting them. My next stop is West Africa and then China and that will be a good start and I will report back to you.

Thank you for asking me here, and having this conference, and please rest assured that you have the right to be heard, and the more practical help you can feed in the greater the chance we have of building disabled people's issues into the mainstream. But at the same time remember we have to keep fighting at home. If we can't set a good example here and ensure equality at home, there's not much chance of poor people in poorer countries achieving this either.