Striving to remove barriers that prevent us from building Vibrant, Diverse, Inclusive, Accessible Communities!
The United Nations (UN) Disability Inclusion Strategy frames disability exclusion as a rights failure that institutions must stop normalizing, stating that “when we secure the rights of persons with disabilities,” the world moves closer to the core values and principles of the United Nations Charter. The article positions disability inclusion as a standard across peace and security, human rights, and development, making clear that leaving barriers in place is a structural choice that blocks People with Disabilities from full participation.
The Strategy directly confronts institutional inaction by establishing a policy and an accountability framework with benchmarks to assess progress and accelerate change. It specifies that senior leadership must champion disability inclusion, strategic planning must take People with Disabilities into account, disability-specific policies or strategies must be developed, and expertise must be formally assigned. These requirements exist because exclusion persists when responsibility is vague and consequences are absent.
The Strategy also addresses compounded exclusion through intersectionality, explicitly recognizing that gender, age, and location shape how people experience disability-related barriers. Examples such as primary school girls using sign language in class show how access depends on inclusive communication and environments, not individual capacity. The twin-track approach rejects one-size-fits-all inclusion that routinely leaves the most marginalized behind.
Finally, the Strategy targets internal exclusion through organizational culture, calling for systems that attract, recruit, retain, and promote persons with disabilities within the UN workforce. With 15% of the world’s population—one billion people—identified as persons with disabilities, most living in developing countries, the article makes clear that failure to change institutional culture sustains global injustice. For Community Builders, this means embedding accessibility and leadership inclusion into the core infrastructure of community life.
Read the Full Article: Disability Inclusion Strategy.
By: The United Nations
