Sightsavers Submission to the International Development Committee: Extreme poverty and the Sustainable Development Goals

About Sightsavers

1. Sightsavers is an international development organisation which works with partners to eliminate avoidable blindness and promote equality of opportunity for people with disabilities in over thirty low- and middle-income countries. Our programmes also include work to ensure quality inclusive education, strengthen health systems and eliminate neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).
2. We welcome the opportunity to contribute to the International Development Committee’s inquiry on ‘extreme poverty and the SDGs’.
3. We have answered questions 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 8 in our submission.

Poverty, inequality and disability

4. Even prior to the pandemic, the world was not on track to meet the SDGs. COVID-19 has led to a ‘historically unprecedented increase in global poverty’ and undermined decades of development efforts.[1] UK ODA has a legal requirement to focus on tackling poverty and addressing gender inequality; and while the aggregate figures of poverty are of significant concern, levels of inequality are also rising.[2]
5. There is a close connection between disability and poverty. People with disabilities are more likely to live in poverty. Stigma and discrimination often prevent people with disabilities accessing employment, services and participating in society on an equal basis with others.[3] As a result, people with disabilities have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 and are more likely to experience poverty because of the pandemic.[4]
6. Poverty is the result of social, economic, political and environmental failures, and it is multidimensional. The link between poverty and failure to uphold rights is critical – not least for people with disabilities. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities provides a rights framework, that complements the implementation of the SDGs – both are necessary to address the causes of poverty.
7. Sightsavers work in linking the UNCRPD, the SDGs and national disability rights legislation, shows how disability rights and the SDGs can be used as a way of creating voice and agency for people with disabilities in local development. For example, India Sightsavers has piloted a Disability Inclusive Score Card (DISC) process. The purpose of DISC is to empower people with disabilities to know and claim their rights and, in doing so, increase the accountability of individuals and institutions for the decisions they make. The process starts with people with disabilities presenting evidence around the level of provision of services. This is then linked with the SDGs, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPWD) Act 2016, to drive effective decision-making and accountability. People with disabilities then use the process to advocate for their rights, monitor SDG implementation and improve access to government systems and schemes[5].
8. Many people with disabilities experience multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, such as on the basis of age, gender, race or class. Addressing gender rights, in particular, is both a legal requirement for UK ODA and essential for tackling the root causes of extreme poverty.
9. The relationship between climate risk and disability is a neglected, yet critical, development issue. Environmental hazards associated with climate change often become disasters for people with disabilities as they expose existing inequalities and forms of discrimination. Disability tends to be under-represented in the data used to plan, mitigate and respond to climate risk. Understanding how different factors intersect to shape the lived experience is crucial for more effective decision making. This is why inclusive, people-centred approaches, that consider which individuals in societies are likely to experience contextual marginalisation and ensure their engagement in the design of effective interventions that enhance their resilience, are required. A focus on inequality, marginalised people and poverty will therefore become even more critical to the UK’s approach to development as the climate crisis intensifies.

FCDO strategy and policy

10. We strongly welcome the recent publication of the FCDO’s Disability Inclusion and Rights Strategy as a positive step forward in demonstrating the ongoing commitment of the UK to disability inclusion. The strategy builds on the UK’s previous work on disability inclusion led by DFID and previously examined by the International Development Committee.
11. The strategy takes a strong rights-based approach and re-confirms the UK’s commitment to be a global leader on disability inclusion. Following on from the merging of the FCO and DFID, the Strategy emphasises the importance of leadership on disability inclusion across the UK’s diplomacy and development efforts.  The commitment to taking a comprehensive and holistic approach to disability inclusion is positive, and in line with the SDGs. It is positive that the strategy looks beyond the governments programming and commits to ensuring the processes such as procurement are also driving inclusion. We are pleased to see new areas of focus for the UK, such as embedding disability inclusion within its International Climate Finance portfolio – a neglected and critical area. 
12. To achieve its objective to be a leader in disability inclusion the FCDO must now take clear steps to operationalise this strategy. While it is positive that the strategy includes an indicative monitoring framework with accompanying indicators, this monitoring framework should be finalised, contain clear targets, and be made public. Likewise, the delivery plan that is committed to in the strategy must be published. A concrete delivery plan which turns the positive words written in the strategy into concrete actions will be critical to drive change and reach the ambition which the FCDO has laid out in the strategy. While in many ways this Strategy is stronger than DFID’s previous disability strategy, it also contains less specific mechanisms for implementation. The previous Strategy continued a set of ‘Minimum Standards’ that all Business Units had to meet – as this strategy lacks these mechanisms the operationalisation will be even more crucial.
13. The Strategy sets out that the FCDO will use ‘a continuum that moves from ‘equality awareness’ to ‘equality transformation’ that ‘encourages collaborative work to empower women and girls, people with disabilities, and other socially marginalised groups.’ This could be a positive way to ensure that the UK is focusing on intersectionality and addressing marginalisation. The FCDO should set out in more detail how this will be implemented in practice and publish data on its use.
14. While the launch of the new Disability Inclusion and Rights Strategy is positive, it will exist in the broader context of the FCDO’s approach to development and the SDGs. Without a clear overarching strategy for the FCDO’s development work there is a gap in this broader enabling environment. DFID’s ‘Leave no-one behind’ promise[6] provided an important overarching vision for the UK’s development policy on inclusion, but this has not been reconfirmed since the merger.
15. The upcoming International Development Strategy must clearly place poverty reduction as central to the UK's approach to development and foreign policy and be aligned with the SDGs. In particular, the IDS should be clear about prioritising the principle of 'leave no one behind' and reaching those furthest behind. The International Development Strategy will need to outline how the UK government will continue to meet its legal requirement to contribute to a reduction in poverty, and towards reducing gender inequality. UK ODA should be aligned to the SDGs, as the global framework for sustainable development. The Strategy should also outline how the UK government will recommit to the principle of ‘leave no one behind’. It must also cover UK ODA spent by other government departments, ensuring that they meet the requirement to contribute to a reduction in poverty and reducing gender inequality.
16. The UK government does not have a dedicated, public strategy guiding its work on global health. A strategy is essential because it outlines and delivers synergies that will increase the impact of the UK Government’s work across global health – including aligning initiatives to improve health equity alongside other SDGs, such as tackling extreme poverty and improving education outcomes.
17. Following the merger of the FCO and DFID, the FCDO should more clearly articulate how foreign policy and diplomacy can support and reinforce objectives around poverty reduction and leaving no one behind. It is positive that the UK’s Human Rights Ambassador has committed to championing the promotion and protection of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of people with disabilities as part of their recent Global Disability Summit Commitments. This will be a critical to ensure that the UK’s diplomacy work is inclusive of people with disabilities and aligned with the SDGs. The FCDO now needs to set out what this means in practice and how the UK’s Human Rights Ambassador, and other human rights mechanisms, will support disability inclusion.

Recommendations

• Ensure that the International Development Strategy is aligned with the SDGs and is anchored in their central principle of leaving no one behind.
• Publish a Delivery Plan and monitoring framework with clear targets to accompany and operationalise its new Disability Inclusion and Rights Strategy. A publicly available Delivery Plan and clear targets are critical to ensure accountability and implementation.
• Build on the recently published Health Systems Strengthening paper and Ending Preventable Deaths Action Plan and publish a new global health strategy.
• Set out in more detail how the equalities continuum will be implemented and report against its use.

Data

18. In order to tackle poverty it is critical that more granular data is collected and used to understand the needs and experiences of the most marginalised people in society and to ensure that resources are being allocated to maximize outcomes for the poorest. Currently, too many people are invisible in data and too little data is routinely disaggregated. While there are many technical and methodological challenges inherent in improving disaggregation, some of the largest barriers are political and financial.
19. The UK government, under DFID, was an early champion of the Inclusive Data Charter through DFID’s IDC Action Plan.[7] However, despite this the UK does not have a current Action Plan, which is a critical way of ensuring that progress is being made in this area.
20. In order to support achievement of the SDGs the FCDO should take into account the complex societal norms which surround gender and disability when promoting inclusive data. For example, targets around contraceptive should focus on access rather than use as this is less likely to lead to women and girls with disabilities being pressured into ‘accepting’ contraceptives in order for targets to be met.

Recommendations

• Publish a revised Inclusive Data Charter Action Plan which clearly sets out how the UK will improve data collection within its own work and support partners to improved data disaggregation.
• Set specific targets for the number of programmes marked as disability inclusive against the OECD DAC disability inclusion marker and for programmes marked as both disability inclusive and gender equitable.
• Work in partnership to support the development and refinement of national and subnational data collection systems and analysis on sex, disability and age disaggregated data. This should include disability disaggregated data around provision of sexual and reproductive health information and services.

Women and girls

21. One in five women are women with disabilities[8] and yet approaches to address the needs of women and girls often do not consider women and girls with disabilities. The FCDO need to do more to address the structural inequalities that affect women and girls with disabilities, including economic empowerment and girls’ education. The FCDO must consider the multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination that some people with disabilities experience and address structural drivers of inequalities. They should be gender transformative and combat negative gender and disability stereotypes.  Women and girls with disabilities should be supported as agents of change in shaping the decisions that affect them, which will lead to more equitable outcomes. 
22. A priority area for women and girls set out by the FCDO is girls’ education. The UK has made education commitments to prioritise the most marginalised children, including by increasing targeted support for children with disabilities. Through the Girls Education Challenge, the UK government reached more than 100,000 girls with disabilities, targeting a further 18,000 through Leave No Girl Behind grant. Since 2018, the GEC has supported 31,550 girls with disabilities to access learning, far exceeding the expected target (10,000). We welcome progress on the use of Washington Group Short Set questions in GEC projects, with increased data collection on disability - more girls with disabilities are identified, particularly girls with psychosocial needs. The approaches taken with the GEC should be scaled up and replicated and considerations of intersectionality made across all programmes. There is a need for better indicators across all interventions to ensure programmes sufficiently respond to the needs of girls with disabilities. Return to school plans must have a targeted approach to ensuring girls with disabilities are included.
23. Through its Girls Education Action Plan (GEAP), the UK committed to two global goals of getting 40 million more girls in primary and secondary school, and one third more reading by the age of 10 in low-and middle-income countries by 2025. The FCDO must outline how they will target girls with disabilities in the GEAP, as this has yet to be defined.
24. The upcoming FCDO 2022 Women and Girls Strategy must take into account the intersecting forms of discrimination that women and girls with disabilities experience, the specific barriers they face and include concrete actions to overcome them. It is positive that the FCDO has committed to this in its recent Global Disability Summit commitments. The inclusion of women and girls with disabilities in the strategy should include specific actions which will lead to their increased inclusion, such as consultation with organisations of women with disabilities, providing targeted support for women and girls with disabilities and setting targets for the number of UK Aid programmes being marked as both gender equitable and disability inclusive using the OECD DAC markers.
25. The FCDO’s new disability inclusion and rights strategy sets out that they will ‘equip our staff and delivery partners with the skills, tools and knowledge to better integrate gender equality and disability inclusion in their work’. This is an important commitment and the FCDO should implement a clear plan for increasing staff and partner capacity across the intersection of gender and disability. This will be crucial as the UK is yet to put in place an approach which effectively tackles poverty.

Recommendations

• Ensure the upcoming Women and Girls Strategy takes into account the intersecting forms of discrimination women and girls with disabilities experience and contains specific actions to facilitate inclusion.
• Develop a clear plan for improving capacity on gender and disability awareness across staff and partners
• Implement lessons learnt from programmes such as the Girl’s Education Challenge to mainstream disability across the FCDO’s education programmes.
• Define specific targets for disability inclusion for the two global education targets of 40 million more girls into school and another 20 million reading at the age of 10 by 2025.

ODA cuts

26. As previously acknowledged by the Committee a lack of transparency around the ODA cuts makes it difficult to fully assess their impact. However, on the basis of the evidence available we are concerned that poverty reduction was not sufficiently taken into account when making decisions around the cuts.
27. For example, as previously highlighted to the Committee, the UK made the decision to cut the majority of its funding towards eliminating Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs). NTDs are diseases of poverty, they exist in areas without adequate sanitation, clean water and healthcare and are particularly prevalent in remote and rural areas and conflict zones[9]. NTDs cause significant pain and lead to blindness and other impairments, they keep children from attending school and prevent adults from working, they perpetuate a cycle of poverty and lead to billions of the world’s poorest people being unable to reach their potential. In addition to the enormous benefits to people’s quality of life, the elimination of NTDs also has significant economic impacts. A recent study by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) found that meeting parasitic worm infection elimination targets for four African countries (Ethiopia, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, and Kenya) would yield £3.7 billion in productivity gains by 2040[10]. The withdrawal of FCDO support to all NTDs programmes left more than 200 million of the world’s poorest people at risk from NTDs. It continues to threaten
28. We also note that an Equalities Assessment from the FCDO found that there would be negative impact of the cuts on gender equality and people with disabilities.32 The assessment also stated that there would be “a 60% reduction in funding for social protection programmes” pointing out that these programmes are key in reducing poverty and mitigating economic shocks for the most marginalised. As far as we are aware, there has not, at this stage, been any comprehensive assessment of the extent of harm caused by the cuts to marginalised groups.
29. People with disabilities have traditionally not been prioritised by development actors, despite being overrepresented amongst those living in poverty and experiencing significant levels of discrimination. Unfortunately, we know that when budgets are constrained, provisions which support people with disabilities are often the first to be cut.

Recommendations

• Conduct analysis to understand whether cuts to mainstream programmes have disproportionately impacted people with disabilities and take action to revise these trends if identified
• Conduct and publish future equalities assessments to ensure transparent, accountable decision making.

For further information about this submission or any aspect of Sightsavers’ work, please contact Lauren West, Parliamentary Adviser, at lwest@sightsavers.org

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              | March 2022