Pacific Disability Forum

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News Title: Disability in Australia's Program

Date Published: 26 May 2010

Disability in Australia's aid program

New budget measure - Disability: Fair development accessible to all

“Australia will provide $30.2 million over four years, beginning 2010 –11, in the new budget measure 'Disability: Fair development accessible to all’. This new budget measure funds the implementation of the disability - specific outcomes outlined in the Government's strategy Development for All: Towards a disability-inclusive Australian aid program 2009-2014.

About the new budget measure

Disability-specific efforts under the new budget measure will focus on:

Improved quality of life for people with disability
Strengthened capacity and leadership in disability and development.

Component one - improved quality of life for people with disability - has three objectives:

Working with partner countries (governments, Disabled Peoples’ Organisations, civil society) to ensure national development efforts include and benefit people with disability, initially in Cambodia, East Timor, PNG and Samoa.
Improving provision of disability services and facilities, including rehabilitation, assistive devices, technologies and equipment, to enable social and economic participation.
Improving understanding of the links between poverty, disability and development to better address barriers to social and economic participation, and create a robust evidence base to inform policy and programming.

Component two - Strengthened capacity and leadership in disability and development - has two objectives:

Developing technical resources and expertise to build the capacity of AusAID and regional partners and integrate disability in all aspects of Australia’s international development assistance program.
Building effective leadership on disability to ensure that it is recognised internationally as a development priority and resourced appropriately.

Implementation approaches

Initiatives will be developed progressively over the next 12 - 18 months by AusAID’s Disability Inclusive Development team in consultation with key stakeholders. Key stakeholders include people with disability, relevant AusAID program and sector areas, international, regional, and bilateral partners, and Australian stakeholders working in this area. Initiatives will build on and align with existing support and aid delivery modalities in the context of a rapidly scaling up international development assistance program. It is envisaged that initiatives will be implemented through a combination of:

global and regional mechanisms of support such as grant funding for the Pacific Island Forum’s Regional Strategy on Disability, Pacific Disability Forum and the Disability Rights Fund
multilateral and bilateral partnerships to establish new and innovative mechanisms of support
enabling support mechanisms such as a Disability Resource Facility to build capacity to implement disability inclusive development in existing Australian aid programs and sectors.

Geographic focus

'Disability: Fair development accessible to all' will focus primarily on women, men, girls and boys with disability living in the Pacific and in Asia. …”

To read the full details about the new disability budget measure cited above, please visit AusAID’s website at http://www.ausaid.gov.au/keyaid/disability.cfm

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