APDA is fully committed to working
internationally to advance the cause of disabled people.
Since 2002, APDA has formally
partnered with an organisation of people with disabilities in
India
called Concerned Action Now (CAN), which resulted in a small ongoing project
with the aim of social and economic empowerment of people with disabilities
in slum areas in Delhi. Through the collaborative experience of this work, which
involved APDA sharing the British migrant disability experience and how it
had won rights and culturally-appropriate services for Asian migrants with
disabilities in the UK and CAN sharing its experience of winning rights for
people with disabilities in a developing nation, it is clear that there is a
substantial need for peer support, skills sharing and transfer, joint
campaigning and empowerment to serve the emerging disability rights services
and campaign work being undertaken in South Asia and South-East
Asia.
This need has been further confirmed
through additional sharing by APDA of experience and research projects
through links made with other international potential disability
organisation partners in 2005 at events such as: Disability: A Global
Perspective on Rights to Education and Livelihoods (Thailand, October)
organised by Leonard Cheshire International and UNESCAP and Regional
Workshops on National Action Plans on Disability (Thailand, October)
organised by UNESCAP.
We feel that international
development activities and programmes, although generally advanced and
conceptually forward-thinking, do not go far enough in terms of
mainstreaming disability requirements into their core work, and as a result,
work undertaken can appear to deal with disability issues only as an
afterthought. We therefore welcome approaches from partner organisations
around the world that are interested in working together to address this.
