Today, USAID announced the release of the new 2024 Nothing Without Us: USAID Disability Policy. There are more than 1.3 billion persons with disabilities around the world - 80 percent of whom live in low- and middle-income countries. Any issue that affects humans - climate change, hunger, disease - often disproportionately affects persons with disabilities. Intentional, sustainable, and meaningful inclusion of persons with disabilities in all areas of USAID's work is therefore no longer an option - it is essential to realize our potential and meet our development goals.
The 2024 Policy is a comprehensive update to the 1997 USAID Disability Policy in response to stakeholder feedback and changes in the 21st century. At its core, the Policy reinforces USAID's commitment to championing disability-inclusive development and the rights of persons with disabilities. The Policy, upheld by seven key operating principles, seeks to empower and elevate the lives of persons with disabilities by ensuring that USAID and our partners recognize, respect, value, meaningfully engage, include, and are intentional in supporting persons with disabilities and their representative organizations.
The Policy:
- Updates our framework of understanding disability to a social and rights-based framework in which the goal is to remove societal barriers to participation of persons with disabilities in their communities;
- Promotes the inclusion of persons with disabilities both in wider USAID programming and in activities focused specifically on persons with disabilities;
- Underscores the importance of working with persons with disabilities and local disability-led groups across all phases of the program cycle;
- Highlights promising approaches to disability inclusion in the full range of USAID programming areas.
