ILO participates in European Regional Disability Summit ahead of the 2022 Global Disability Summit

ILO Assistant Director-General and Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia, Heinz Koller, participated in the European Regional Disability Summit: Perspectives on Pan European international cooperation. The summit was organized by the European Disability Forum to take stock of the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and to provide a forum to exchange views on how the Europe and Central Asia region can increase international cooperation and implementation of global commitments on disability inclusive development.

Mr Koller participated in the high-level plenary to discuss commitments with other UN agencies including UNDP, UNICEF, OHCHR and WHO. A summary of the discussions was presented as an outcome document to the 2022 Global Disability Summit on 16 and 17 February with attendance by the ILO Director-General Mr Guy Ryder.

According to WHO, people with disabilities make up an estimated one billion or 15 per cent of the world's population, of whom 80 per cent are of working age. An estimated 135 million Europeans live with a disability. However, the rights of people with disabilities to decent work is too often denied with discrimination, disempowerment, and lack of understanding in the world of work. People with disabilities, particularly women with disabilities, face enormous attitudinal, physical, and informational barriers to equal opportunities in the world of work.

Social justice and decent work for all can only be realised if persons with disabilities, including those with physical, psychosocial, intellectual or sensory impairments, are fully and meaningfully included in the world of work. To achieve this goal, the ILO works to increase the employability of persons with disabilities, to support employers becoming more inclusive and to promote enabling legislative and policy environments. Of the 51 member states that constitute the ILO’s European and Central Asia region, 36 have ratified the ILO Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment Convention 159 on disabled persons.

Disability-inclusive development means that all stages of development processes are inclusive of and accessible to persons with disabilities. It requires that all persons have equal access to education, health care services, work and employment, and social protection, among others. In the region, policies related to inclusive international cooperation remain complicated, due in part by the complex geographical and legal landscape. Speaking at the Summit, Mr Koller said “a recurrent challenge in many countries of the region remains the procedure of determination of the status of remaining working capacity of persons with disabilities as jobseekers, where the medical arguments still predominate over the skills and abilities to work”.

The ILO has a longstanding commitment to promoting equality of opportunity and treatment for persons with disabilities. To address the many difficulties, it is building upon its growing experience of consultation with persons with disabilities and supporting the capacity of the social partners to progressively engage with Organizations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs), in the context of its policy and technical work assistance and related partnerships. The work of the ILO Global Business and Disability Network includes the participation of the International Disability Alliance while ILO field offices are implementing disability specific projects involving national OPDs. The ILO is also part of a working group that is developing guidelines for UN entities on how to carry out these consultations under the United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy.

At the Global Disability Summit, the ILO reiterated its commitment to promoting decent work for persons with disabilities and in strengthening partnerships to leverage the potential for enhanced policy coherence around disability inclusion through multi-stakeholder partnerships such as the Climate Action for Jobs, Global Initiative on Decent Jobs for Youth, and Global Partnership for Universal Social Protection. Speaking at the Global Disability Summit, ILO Director-General Guy Ryder said: “There is nothing more inclusive than having a decent job, and nothing more excluding than being marginalised in the labour market”.

At both summits, Mr Ryder an Mr Koller said that the ILO is committed to ensuring its policies, programmes, projects and operations adopt a human-rights based, gender-responsive approach to disability inclusion in line with the ILO’s Global call to action for a human-centred recovery from the COVID-19 crisis that is inclusive, sustainable and resilient.