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CAMPAIGN 2000 for the Asian and Pacific Decade of Disabled
Persons, 1993-2002, December 11-15, 2000 - Bangkok
Theme: "Breaking Barriers to Promote the Social Integration of
Disabled Persons"


Education for ALL? What Next?

by

William G. Brohier, Co-ordinator, Education and Rehabilitation of Visually Impaired Persons, Interdisciplinary Advisory Committee, CBM International and Past President, International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairment


Education for ALL (EFA): should this be equated to the futile search for Utopia? Just pie in the sky - a pipe dream? Most regrettably, that is what it will be in 2015 for the vast majority of the millions of children with disabilities in the developing countries, UNLESS....!

However, before addressing the question, "What Next?," in the struggle for the education of all disabled children as well, the reason "Why?" for the above apparently pessimistic but conditional prediction should be considered. A look at the past and the present paints a clear picture and conveys a loud message:

  1. More than half a century ago (1948) the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

  2. In 1975 the UNGA adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons.

  3. Since then, over the past twenty-five years, there has been accelerated interest in disability issues and a number of other important Conventions/ Declarations/Action Plans/etc. have been either ratified or acceded to or accepted by acclamation by state governments and international and national non-governmental organisations. In particular, the following are among those which relate directly to Education for All, including disabled children:

    • Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (1989), especially Articles 23, 28 and 29; also Articles 2, 3, 6 and 12.

      It has been ratified by all countries in this region and is, therefore, legally and morally binding on them as States Parties "to promote and protect the right of children with disabilities." (UNICEF-EAPRO: "The Right to Education of Children with Disabilities - A Review of States Parties Initial Reports on the Convention on the Rights of the Child - Asia and Pacific Region") This 1999 Report and an ESCAP Report (1999) on "Education for Children and Youth with Disabilities into the 21st Century" point out that, while some significant progress has been made, there is a paucity of specific disability-related data, the little that is available is also either inconsistent, unreliable and/or confusing, and that very much more remains to be done for the vast majority of disabled children.

    • World Declaration on Education for All and its Framework for Action to meet Basic Learning Needs (1990), especially Article 3, Clause 5:

      The learning needs of the disabled demand special attention. Steps need to be taken to provide equal access to education to every category of disabled persons as an integral part of the education system.

      Nothing could be more clearly stated! The Declaration an Framework were accepted by acclamation, year 2000 having been unanimously agreed to as the target. But what is the status today, a decade later? Worrying and very disheartening!

    • World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children and the Plan of Action, which was the outcome of the UNICEF World Summit for Children (1990).

      Again, ten key action areas were identified and accepted. Unfortunately, relatively little has been accomplished in the developing countries for children with disabilities.

    • This region's very specific and truly unique Asian and Pacific Decade of Disabled Persons, 1993-2002 (ESCAP 1992), together with its:

      • Proclamation on the Full Participation and Equality of People with Disabilities in the Asian and Pacific Region which, up to October 4, 2000, had been signed by 41 member governments out of its 51 member states and 9 associate members

      • Agenda for Action for the Asian and Pacific Decade of Disabled Persons, 1993-2002 (1993), with its comprehensive coverage of the 12 major areas of concernc)

      • Revised and strengthened 107 targets (previously 73) for the remaining three years of the Decade (a year of which has already slipped past), especially the 15 targets for #6. Education which include 7 new ones, as proposed at the Regional Forum on Meeting the Targets of the Asian and Pacific Decade of Disabled Persons (1999) and subsequently adopted by the Commission.

      This week Campaign 2000 in Bangkok should reveal how much more still has to be achieved within the next two years, even in some of the more developed countries in this region, if Education for All is to touch the lives of disabled children as well!

    • World Conference on Special Needs Education and its Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education (1994).

      This gathering of high-level government representatives, world experts in special needs education, and (I)NGOs focused on the value and potential of inclusive schools for the vast majority of children with disabilities, and also spelt out clear guidelines for the preparation and successful implementation of such an approach.

      Once more, it will be seen that neither inclusive schools nor integrated education programmes have been introduced and/or expanded as much as they could and should have been.

So much for the past. Now for a brief look at the present to complete the picture:

  1. In January this year UNESCO-PROAP co-organised with UNICEF, UNFPA, UNDP, The World Bank, Bilateral Donors, NGOs and Countries, the Asia-Pacific Conference on EFA 2000 Assessment. These are the same agencies and organisations which had sponsored the earlier meetings. Therefore, in view of the various global and regional commitments and undertakings referred to above, it was bitterly disappointing and utterly incomprehen- sible that, of the 18 key indicators used to assess country progress towards achieving Education for All, not one of them directly addressed the status of educational services for disabled children in the respective countries!

    The above serious omission was highlighted in the Roundtable recommendations on Inclusive Education: a Process, a Challenge, held during the Assessment, and also brought to the attention of the organisers with a strong plea that the special needs of disabled children be included "as a regular item in the agendas of all ministerial and other forums concerned with education issues in the Asian and Pacific region."

  2. The above EFA 2000 Assessment was in preparation for the World Education Forum on Education for All (April 2000). The very disturbing fact which was reported is that, ten years after the EFA Declaration and the stated commitments by the world community to achieving Education for All by the year 2000, "more than 113 million children have no access to primary education, 880 million adults are illiterate, gender discrimination continues to permeate education systems...."; and so it goes on!

    As was to be expected, against such a scenario, the special needs of disabled children received no direct mention. However, is the weakness in the system an appropriate justification for the violation of disabled children's human rights, even more so in view of the ratified CRC referred to earlier?

With reference to para.2 of this paper, is the picture becoming clearer and is the message getting louder? It should surprise no one that, in the teeming mass of the 113 million children who are denied of their basic human right to education, disabled children are probably among the highest, not in terms of numbers but on a proportional basis! UNICEF (Bangkok, 1999) estimates that "only 1 in every 50 children with disability has access to education, i.e. only 2 %."

Faced with such realities, one could easily become very cynical and say, 'Words, words, and more words - in fact, volumes of them - and billions of US$ worth!' when one takes into account the cost of the numerous gatherings, the very large numbers involved, and the time spent! But how much direct benefit has it brought to disabled children and adults, and to how many, especially those in the rural areas and urban slums? Surely the cost-effectiveness as well as the cost-efficiency of a conference must be measured in terms of the direct benefits which follow, not the cleverly crafted documents which come out of them!

The reason, in the opening paragraph of this paper, for the extremely guarded optimism about the future, in terms of all disabled children receiving education by 2015, should be loud and clear! However, "Hope springs eternal in the human breast." Therefore, doom and gloom apart, there are several encouraging developments, which hold out some hope, even for the many millions of unseen, unheard, and unnumbered children with disabilities! The Dakar Framework for Action of the World Education Forum spells out a new resolve and commitment to achieving real Education for ALL by 2015, the new target year.

To achieve this ambitious and noble goal, which would transform the pipe dream, mentioned in the introductory paragraph of this paper, into reality for children with disabilities too, ".... all States will be requested to develop or strengthen existing national plans of action by 2002 at the latest. These plans .... should be developed through more transparent and democratic processes, involving stakeholders, especially people's representatives, community leaders, parents, learners, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society." (Dakar Framework, para.9)

Para.7 of the above Framework spells out the collective commitments:

We hereby collectively commit ourselves to the attainment of the following goals:

  • expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children;

  • ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality;

  • ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programmes;

  • achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults;

  • eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls' full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality;

  • improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills.

The September 2000 United Nations Millennium Declaration is another huge undertaking, which likewise demands action at country, regional and international level in all fields of human endeavour. Just two selected quotes from this lengthy document:

  • Development and poverty eradication
  • We resolve further:

    • To ensure that, by the same date [2015], children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling and that girls and boys will have equal access to all levels of education.

  • Strengthening the United Nations
  • We resolve therefore:

    • To give greater opportunities to the private sector, non-governmental organizations and civil society, in general, to contribute to the realization of the Organization's goals and programmes.

So there you have it! The foundations for moving forward have been laid and it is time to forge ahead from the past and the present into the future: "What Next?" so that all disabled children too can enjoy "equal access to education," which should become "an integral part of the education system", as declared in 1990.

To put this educational need for ALL children into a financial perspective, the NGO Declaration on Education for All, International Consultation of NGOs, Dakar 25 April 2000 states, in para.2: The price for realising Education for All is an additional USD 8 billion a year. This amount is the equivalent of four days of global military spending and 9 minutes of international currency speculation.

Thankfully, the NGO Declaration above also included specific reference to disabled persons as being among those who are "marginalised and excluded." It should be safe to estimate that the cost of meeting the special educational needs of all disabled children would be a mere 5% of the USD 8 billion quoted above. Therefore, viewed against global spending, it is not a lack of funds which continues to deny even basic education for ALL children. The barriers which have to be broken are the present priorities which determine the allocation of government and other funds, as well as access to those funds which are available.

Sad to say, it is obvious from the foregoing that, in spite of all that has been said and spent in the name of disabled persons, disability-related concerns still suffer from having a very low priority in most of the developing countries at least! This is obvious because of their continued exclusion from most mainstream development programmes. In the words of Bengt Lindqvist, UN Special Rapporteur of the Commission for Social Development on Disability:

At the same time there are important areas, where we seem to have failed to make major progress. In my opinion this is the case both in employment and education, and without considerable improvement in these key areas it will always be impossible to achieve full participation....It is easy to see that there are serious challenges ahead of us. In some cases the task will be to use already created opportunities. In others our duty will be to challenge the lack of progress and thereby, hopefully, create new opportunities.
(Presented at the World Blind Union's 5th General Assembly, Nov.20-24, 2000)

Political will is the golden key which can unlock the 'treasury' door, but it is the will of the people which is the power that will turn that key! In this context, 2001 offers excellent opportunities for pro-active affirmative action at country, regional and international levels. Several very important meetings are scheduled for next year and action must be taken soon to put positive pressure on the powers that be to ensure not only that disability concerns and needs are added to the agendas of these meetings but also that they are adopted in the report:

  1. High-level International and Intergovernmental Event on Financing for Development [in relation to poverty eradication - date not mentioned]

  2. 3rd UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries in May

  3. Asia-Pacific Youth Forum of the UN System, May 30-Jun.1, Bangkok

  4. 3rd Asia-Pacific Intergovernmental Meeting on HRD for Youth, Jun.4-8, Bangkok

  5. UN Summit for Children, September

In addition to the above opportunities, Mr Bengt Lindqvist, referred to above, is working on:

  1. Complementing the Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities (UNGA 1993) and other related matters, and

  2. How disability-related concerns can be built into the UN Committee's guidelines for monitoring country implementation of the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

A well thought-out concise proposal could be a valuable contribution to the above processes.

As quoted earlier from the Dakar Framework, it is incumbent upon governments to "develop or strengthen existing national plans of action by 2002 at the latest" in order to attain the goal of EFA by 2015. Therefore, it is essential that Self-help organisations, parents, NGOs engaged in disability services, and all other non-governmental sectors of society concerned become directly involved in the process immediately, as provided for in the Framework.

While "Breaking Barriers" is an appropriate theme for Campaign 2000, perhaps the clarion call for 2001 should already be: Confronting Challenges by:

  1. Campaigning for a Convention on the Rights of Disabled Persons, as proposed in the Beijing Declaration on the Rights of People with Disabilities in the New Century (March 2000)

  2. Pulling into the struggle strong political will and good government support

  3. Exploring alternative sources of in-country and regional funding as well as income generation projects which could help to supplement government's educational programmes

  4. Ensuring that high priority is given to HRD, especially for the empowerment and capacity building of disabled persons

  5. Promoting the introduction and/or expansion of inclusive schools and supporting the conversion of residential schools into resource centres which can also cater to the needs of those children who cannot benefit by attending inclusive schools and integrated education programmes

  6. Insisting that teachers and instructors are adequately and appropriately trained to provide quality education and training at all levels

  7. Lobbying for legislation in education which is anti-discriminatory

  8. Advocating for the abolishment of poverty as well as ignorance and prejudice on disability issues which hinder access to education

As the Dakar NGO Declaration, referred to above, ends with the sentence: "WE want action now!" in order to ensure Education for All by 2015, so does this paper but also with a prayer that a miracle will take place in the education of disabled children and a poem for the unconverted:



WHO IS BLIND

If you fail to see the person
but only see the disability
then who is blind?

If you cannot hear
your brother's
cry for justice
who is deaf?

If you do not communicate
with your sister
but separate her from you
who is mentally handicapped?

If you do not stand up
for the rights of all persons
who is the crippled?

Your attitude,
Towards persons with disabilities
may be our biggest handicap



Tone Wone (Person with Disability)
Poet of Africa




Last update 2001/06/25