Millennium Development Goals

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, I too would like to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, on securing this debate and on the comprehensive and wide-ranging way in which she introduced it. I also apologise that I was caught out by there not being a fourth Question today so I missed the first minute or two of her speech.

Discussion of the framework that should take the place of the MDGs when they run out in 2015 is now in full swing and it is good that the House of Lords should have an opportunity to put its two penn’orth in. I declare my interest as president of the International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairment, an organisation which is not very snappily named but at least has the merits of doing what its says on the tin—promoting the education of children and young people with visual impairment. As such, we have a clear interest in what the post-2015 framework has to say about both disability and education.

There is now a widespread sense that it needs a stronger focus on the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalised and in this I very much echo what the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, said. The word “disability” does not feature anywhere in the millennium development goals. Disability may have been perceived as a niche issue at the time, but we now know that disability is both a cause and a consequence of poverty. Disabled people make up 15% of the world’s population, yet it is estimated that 20% of the world’s poorest people are disabled.

While overall progress against the millennium development goals is being made, the most vulnerable are being left behind. According to the World Report on Disability, there are an estimated 1 billion people with disabilities across the globe. They face barriers to participation in society, such as in accessing development programmes and funds, education, employment, healthcare, communication and transport. People with disabilities and their families—80% of whom live in developing countries—are over-represented among those living in absolute poverty.

Furthermore, people with disabilities are particularly at risk from the effects of climate change, such as natural disasters and food insecurity. They are also more vulnerable in situations of conflict. They face discrimination on multiple levels yet remain absent in the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of MDGs. This has been compounded by a lack of reliable statistics on people with disabilities.

The International Disability Alliance and the International Disability and Development Consortium have jointly developed recommendations for a more equitable and inclusive post-2015 agenda for people with disabilities. They say that the new framework,

“must enable a focus on the poorest, most marginalised groups, such as persons with disabilities, ensuring … full and effective participation for persons with disabilities”,

and their representative organisations at all stages of the process. Any new global partnerships and international co-operation efforts must be driven by a human rights approach and be compliant with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, including all projects and programmes, whether mainstream or disability specific, with equality and non-discrimination as priority themes. There should be a stand-alone goal on equality and non-discrimination, as well as the obligation to pursue these principles right across the new framework. All goals should be inclusive of persons with disabilities and measures of progress should be disaggregated to show impact on, and inclusion of, persons with disabilities within each goal. The current understanding and definition of poverty, progress and development should be revised to go beyond the most basic data of income, consumption and wealth.

I have not left myself much time to say why it is crucial for education to remain central to the post-2015 framework. However, education has been shown to be one of the most effective means of increasing the health, wealth and stability of nations. Now is not the time to move on from the focus of the education for all goals. The latest figures from UNESCO show that progress has stalled—more than 60 million children of primary school age remain out of school. Many young people lack even basic foundation skills. Around 775 million adults remain illiterate—two-thirds of them are women, which is only 12% down on the 1990 figure. Global inequality in learning outcomes remains stark. MDG2, like some of the other existing goals, has suffered from a lack of specific focus on reaching the most vulnerable and marginalised. Without needing to report progress in a disaggregated way across different sections of society, it was perhaps inevitable that people would focus on the lowest hanging fruit, the easiest to reach in the quest for results. Groups such as children with disabilities, being some of the hardest to reach, have thus been left behind. UNESCO estimates that a third of all children of primary school age who are not in school have a disability, and being disabled more than doubles the chance of a child never enrolling in school in some countries.

The Global Campaign for Education has made the following recommendations for education with a new framework: first, that there continues to be a central focus on the basic right to free universal and compulsory education; secondly, that the education provided in all countries is of high quality and that the children achieve learning outcomes relevant to their lives; thirdly, that education and learning are equitable and inclusive and that no population group is excluded from education or given substandard educational provision; fourthly, that there is a global recognition of the importance of a professionalised, properly qualified and supported teaching profession in order to achieve education for all; and, finally, that systems are developed effectively to monitor goals and targets and that the importance of accurate data collection is fully recognised as a means of ensuring equitable progress.