Disability and the IDB

About the IDB Disability and Development Team: PPS 80KB and PDF 350KB


Inclusive Policies in the Bank

Assisting Persons with Disability (PWD) to access and participate in education, labour markets, and political and social spheres through accessible design and inclusive policies is becoming increasingly relevant on the global development agenda as a means to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. In the Bank, we work from an understanding that accessible urban transportation and infrastructure, inclusive education, and labor market insertion programs create opportunities for marginalized groups to be part of the economically active population. Other Bank projects lend support to adopting inclusive judicial and political frameworks and strengthening NGO organizational capacity and advocacy.

Located within the Social Development Division of the Sustainable Development Department (SDS), the disability and development team is guided by the Social Development Strategy, adopted by the IDB's Board of Governors at the 8th Replenishment in 1994. With the Replenishment Poverty Reduction and Social Equity became a Bank priority, and within SDS this is exercised by conducting and disseminating research, designing innovative pilot programs and offering technical assistance to Bank projects. The goal of the disability team and the four other Social Inclusion teams is to support the development of socially inclusive policies throughout Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) towards the full inclusion and participation of all individuals regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, and disability.


IDB Activities on Disability

At the Annual Meeting of the Bank's Board of Governors in 2002, Finland financed a seminar on disability and inclusion. That seminar identified three critical areas for the Bank: 1) Improving the quality of data on persons with disability, 2) increasing the inclusion of persons with disability in the education system, and 3) improving access to transportation. The third area was particularly viewed as an area of Bank expertise with previous successful large-scale projects viewed as Best Practice.

A round of sub-regional meetings began in July 2003 when the Bank convened a meeting of the heads of national statistical institutes (INE) in Buenos Aires for 6 Southern Cone countries and with representatives from CEPAL, the World Bank, the UN and the Washington City Group on Disability to review recent data on disability. Participants at that meeting identified two needs. First, to collect and analyze existing national data on disability. This would include ad hoc surveys and censuses conducted by governmental and non-governmental agencies. Many of these data have not been analyzed. Second, to promote regional harmonization of the disability definition in developing a common instrument to measure disability and its relationship to poverty, age, gender, ethnicity, education, rural/urban, income and labor force participation. Sub-regional meetings followed in Central America in late August 2004 when heads of statistical institutes from 6 countries met in Managua, Nicaragua; in the Caribbean in April 2005 in Kingston, Jamaica; and in the Andean region in May 2005 in Lima, Peru.

With new analyses on disability data the IDB is producing country and regional reports and a series of technical notes on inclusive education, labor market participation, and attention to health care to guide policy-making in improving disability-specific project interventions. The reports will be made available online at an on-going basis.