A new Malta-based global disability monitoring programme was launched today to document and support critical action on rights violations, with a special focus on the global south.

Global Disability Watch, a one-stop disability platform will monitor, collate and report accessible information on disability and development policy from the ground up in an effort to support local advocacy efforts.

The World Health Organisation and the World Bank estimate that around 15 per cent of the world’s population are disabled people. Some 80 per cent of these live in the world’s poorest countries in the global south.

Poverty, malnutrition, inaccessible health care and rehabilitation, educational barriers, and even violence haunt these lives. Many continue to live on the peripheries, confined to spaces blurred by complete invisibility, and in some locations, a denial of their humanity.

Many local rights violations remain unheard and the means to seek redress are weakened by remoteness, lack of resources, and fractured legal systems. Local organisations struggle to build networks of national and international support to lobby and fight for policy and service changes, not least on account of relative isolation.

Many areas, especially those off the beaten track, remain unreported

Through a major programme called Global Disability Watch, The Critical Institute, an international NGO based in Malta has partnered with the University of Munich, the International Centre for Evidence in Disability (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), Plan International, Change UK and Enablement to tilt this power relationship.  

Global Disability Watch will bring together a diverse team of local correspondents, including disabled people’s organisations and activists in over 40 countries.

Shaun Grech, director of Global Disability Watch said the programme will source and investigate stories from the ground up, especially ones that normally go unreported:

“While international organisations, consultants and other professionals, with all good intentions write reports and cover stories, these accounts are often one-sided, developed by, and ultimately for, outsiders. Many areas, especially those off the beaten track, remain unreported.”

Global Disability Watch will also be investigating specific rights violations in partnership with local stakeholders to ensure the process is owned and managed locally and using participatory methods including community journalism:

“Rather than simply send foreign correspondents to ‘pillage’ life narratives, we want to tap into the vast knowledge and experience of locals, and we want to generate ethical information that local advocates and others can ultimately use for their own cause,” Mr Grech said.

The programme, Mr Grech emphasised, is not limited to the production of information, but the ultimate objective is to provide effective tools for focused advocacy, protection and assistance.

GDW also aims to support existing grounded advocacy by offering a learning platform alongside opportunities for local advocates to build strategic alliances, impact policy and practice and ultimately educate.

The development sector still needs to be informed and educated about disability, and Grech said that until that happens, ‘inclusive development’ and other trends such as ‘disability mainstreaming’ will remain mere buzzwords.

Global Disability Watch will be launched at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine today.