When Susan Mulela started a private pre-school for children with disabilities in Kanyama in 2005, it was the fulfilment of a lifelong goal.

Noting that stigma and discrimination are among the biggest problems faced by people with disabilities, she says “Most parents with disabled children do not know what to do with them. They just keep them at home and do not send them to school”.

Susan knows this situation quite well. At the age of six she contracted polio and had to walk with crutches. Yet, unlike many other children with disabilities, she was encouraged by her parents to get an education. After secondary school, she completed a teacher-training course and started a pre-school business.

Thanks to her joining the local cooperative credit and savings union, opportunities opened for Ms. Mulela to link into a network of associations providing entrepreneurship training in business management skills supported by the ILO. Armed with the new knowledge acquired, she hopes to turn her pre-school into a self-sustainable and profitable school for all children, with and without disabilities.

Management training like the workshops Susan attended is just one example of how the ILO can make a difference in the lives of people with disabilities, their families and local communities. Yet, getting others to commit to more inclusive approaches or to integrate issues relating to disability into their work is not always easy.

“Part of the challenge of dealing with disability as an issue in development is to demystify it,” says Barbara Murray, senior disability specialist at the ILO in Geneva. “We know from experience that people with disabilities are capable of earning a living and that many can be just as productive as non-disabled people. With concerted effort, including government, the social partners and civil society, it will be possible to dismantle the barriers that keep disabled people from fully participating in work and society.”

The ILO Disability Team in Geneva and across East and Southern Africa, Asia and the Pacific recognizes that achieving this inclusion is crucial to meeting key international development goals to reduce poverty and improve living standards. The Team is also working to make sure that disability issues are incorporated into Decent Work Country Programmes (DWCPs), which are developed in consultation with ILO constituents to obtain decent work for everyone.

Disability Equality Training (DET) is part of a new effort to make sure that the needs of people with disabilities are taken into account in programmes, projects, currently running or in the planning stages.

A highly interactive facilitated process, DET enables participants to identify ways in which they can take disability issues into account in their work, to promote the equal participation of people with disabilities. DET differs from the traditional approaches to disability awareness raising in that it encourages people to take action to ensure that people with disabilities can enjoy the same rights and privileges as other citizens.

Requests for DET are starting to come in. In March 2009, as a follow-up to the disability audit of the UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) – the strategic programme framework which establishes priorities for UN joint action – for Zambia which was organized by the ILO, the UN Country Team requested a DET workshop for the UN agencies under the banner of ‘One UN’ pilot initiative.

The workshop began to bear fruit immediately. Participants identified a number of initiatives they could undertake to break down the barriers to inclusion including a ‘learning afternoon’ for colleagues on disability inclusion; incorporating disability awareness into monitoring visits; collecting disability-related statistics, for example, in terms of use of services; highlighting disability-related targets and information in forthcoming programmes and publications; and, re-examining the HIV/AIDS 2009 plan to see if there is anything that can be done to include disability.

Beyond their individual agencies, participants also made recommendations for the UN Country Team. One recommendation was to set up a country task force on disability, made up of representatives of several agencies, to take the lead in providing for meaningful inclusion of disability issues in the next UNDAF (2011-2013). The main focus of the taskforce, that held its first meeting in May, will be to ensure that the new framework adequately provides for persons with disabilities.

“Participants now have the tools, the knowledge and the obligation, as well as the rights-based approach. Dedicated people are in place,” says ILO’s Chief Technical Adviser on Child Labour in Lusaka, Ms. Birgitte Poulsen. “The DET workshop was truly an example of the United Nations ‘delivering as one’”.

An initiative planned for August of this year will involve DET for Zambian parliamentarians. “By undertaking this exercise, parliamentarians will be able to better identify how disability relates to their work and to strengthen their capacity to engage their expertise at national and constituency levels. They will also be in a better position to motivate for change within Parliament, especially concerning the introduction of appropriate legislation, the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the allocation of adequate resources for disability programming”, says Mr. Ian Plaskett, Child Rights Officer for UNICEF Zambia (Note 1).

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Note 1 - A number of international labour standards and instruments provide for the inclusion of disabled persons in all aspects of the workplace environment. Among these are the ILO Convention concerning the Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment of Disabled Persons (No. 159) as well as the ILO Code of Practice Managing Disability in the Workplace (2001). Another key international initiative is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The UN Convention represents a major change in that it prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in all forms of employment. Zambia ratified ILO Convention 159 in 1989. Last year, it signed the UN CRPD, though it has not yet ratified it.

Both the disability audit of the UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) for Zambia was organized by the ILO in 2008 and the DET workshop for the UN agencies, from 18-19 March 2009, were made possible with funding from the ILO-Irish Aid project “Promoting Decent Work for Persons with Disabilities through a Disability Inclusion Support Service (INCLUDE) as part of the ‘One-UN’ initiative”.

Susan Mulela participated in ILO-Irish Aid supported workshops and training for women-owned businesses.