IFGH Members Work To Highlight Disability

Posted by Leonie Corcoran | News

IFGH Members Work To Highlight Disability

UNICEF’s flagship publication, The State of the World’s Children, has been published for 2013, with the theme ‘Children with Disabilities’.  Every year, UNICEF’s publication closely examines a key issue affecting children.
The State of the World’s Children: Children with Disabilities was guided by a series of specially commissioned background papers, one of which was authored by IFGH members Mac MacLachlan (Professor of Global Health, Centre for Global Health, Trinity College Dublin) and Hasheem Mannan (Senior Research Fellow, Nossal Institute for Global Health, Melbourne University and CGH, TCD).

Prof MacLachlan and Dr Mannan also recently led a workshop at the Centre for Global Health, Dublin, for participants from 10 countries in the United Nations Partnership to Promote the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The workshop, funded by Irish Aid, is the first component of the Knowledge Management Support Programme being run for the United Nations by staff from the Centre for Global Health, at Trinity.

Other staff who contributed to the workshop included Brynne Gilmore (Workshop Coordinator); and Prof EilishMcAuliffe, Dr Ogenna Uduma, and Dr Michael O’Toole who gave presentations.  Mary Keogh, CBM and Chair of theDochas Disability and International Development Working Group, also presented at the workshop.

Participants in the workshop noted with satisfaction the heightened profile of people with disabilities in Ireland’s new Policy for International Development, One World, One Future (2013).

The IFGH and many other organisations made submissions advocating for this increased profile for people with disabilities in Irish Aid’s work, as part of the public consultation to develop the new policy.