Ensuring equal rights and the full engagement and participation for all persons with disabilities is a cornerstone of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), while the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) also broadly underscore the importance of disability-inclusive development. At the same time, Youth2030 — the UN’s first-ever systemwide youth strategy — prioritizes the participation of the most marginalised youth constituencies, including young persons with disabilities. Further, the United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy (UNDIS) provides the foundation for sustainable and transformative progress on disability inclusion through all pillars of the UN’s work — peace and security, human rights, and development — enabling the UN system to support the implementation of the CRPD and other international human rights instruments, as well as the achievement of the SDGs, the Agenda for Humanity and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.
Yet, despite these frameworks, young persons with disabilities remain one of the most excluded communities with little to no representation at national, regional, and international levels particularly in the Global South. Further, marginalization of young persons with disabilities is compounded as young persons with disabilities find it challenging for their perspectives to be considered and included due to the lack of leadership opportunities and the intersectional discrimination based on their disability and their youth identity.
Persons with disabilities are up to three times more likely to experience physical, sexual, and emotional violence. Women and girls with disabilities face many additional barriers as well; up to ten times more likely to experience sexual violence and abuse. Young persons with disabilities living in forced displacement face heightened protection risks, including violence related to armed conflicts, exploitation, abuse, as well as high levels of stigma in host communities. Further, young persons with disabilities living in forced displacement face numerous barriers to accessing humanitarian assistance and may be denied certain legal rights, such as the right to a nationality.
These intersectional inequalities and discrimination have become even more challenging during COVID-19. The pandemic itself, as well as the resulting impacts of Government measures put in place to contain the pandemic, have disproportionately impacted young people in a multitude of ways. More than 850 million young people,or nearly half the world’s student population, have been kept away from schooling in more than 100 countries. While many countries moved to online and distance learning, other countries are facing the harsh reality of the digital divide. At the same time, nearly 200 million young persons with disabilities around the world have been hit particularly hard amidst this crisis. The digital divide further compounds these challenges, with technology at times deepening inequalities for young persons with disabilities, through barriers such as a lack of access to inclusive learning technology, a stable internet connection or assistive devices and technology.
To ensure that young persons with disabilities have equal access to all services, policies and programmes should be inclusive of and accessible to young persons with disabilities, while also accounting for further intersectional youth identities including but not limited to gender, sexual orientation, indigenous communities, and young persons with disabilities in armed conflict. It is important to bridge the data gap and to create awareness of the requirements of young persons with disabilities across various sectors, ultimately combating stigma and harmful social norms surrounding disabilities and youth. Young persons with disabilities must be part of all stages of the policy and programming process — from design to implementation to monitoring and evaluation. They must also be meaningfully included in the decision-making process through interactions with key disability stakeholders and disability rights mechanisms. This is especially important in terms of ensuring that youth with disabilities can better understand and meaningfully participate in the current disability rights movement while also directly applying the lessons drawn from their own youth specific experiences to support this movement.