How disability-inclusive is Official Development Assistance (ODA) from major European Union (EU) institutions? The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development-Development Assistance Committee’s (OECD-DAC’s) disability policy marker offers some important clues on this question.
This is EDF’s third annual report on the marker. As in previous years, the report looks at the quantity of ODA projects reported as disability-inclusive by key EU institutions 1. In addition, this year we also started to investigate the quality of the European Commission’s (EC’s) reporting.
Our main findings are:
- The share of EC ODA projects reported as disability-inclusive has steadily increased since 2018. However, even in 2022, the majority (62%) of EC ODA projects still did not aim to be disability-inclusive2. This goes against the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) requirement that international cooperation must consistently be inclusive of, and accessible to, persons with disabilities.
- Disability inclusion is very rarely the main objective of EC ODA projects. Only four EC ODA projects had disability inclusion as their principal objective in 2022. This amounts to just 0.3% of the EC’s total 1343 ODA projects.
- In 2022, the European Investment Bank (EIB) adopted the disability policy marker for the first time. But the EIB did not report a single project as disability-inclusive
- The true level of disability inclusion in EC ODA is likely to be lower than the results above suggest. Looking at a sample of EC ODA projects, we compared marker scores with more detailed project documents, to see if the projects really met the OECD-DAC’s disability policy marker criteria. We found repeated examples of projects whose marker scores were too high: in fact, more projects in our sample had been scored too highly than had been scored correctly. Only one out of the four projects with a principal objective on disability inclusion was correctly reported.
- The disability policy marker does not yet cover some key elements of CRPD-compliant programming. Looking again at our sample projects, we compared how the projects scored on the disability marker with how they scored when a more detailed checklist was used. Out of eight projects that qualified as disability-inclusive on the OECD-DAC disability policy marker criteria, only one clearly qualified as disability-inclusive when using the more detailed checklist. This suggests there is an opportunity to make the disability policy marker more ambitious. The EC’s own marker guidance already includes some more ambitious standards, so the EU would be well placed to advocate for this at OECD-DAC level.
We recommend three key actions for the EU:
First, make ODA disability-inclusive:
- The EC should step up both the number of ODA projects and the value of ODA spending that is disability-inclusive.
- The EC should substantially increase the number of ODA projects, and the value of ODA spending, with disability inclusion as the principal objective.
- The EIB should make disability inclusion a priority in its future ODA spending.
Second, report better disability policy marker data. All EU institutions that report ODA data to the OECD-DAC should ensure that their staff are thoroughly trained in use of the marker, and that data is checked before reporting, to ensure marker scores correspond to the OECD-DAC’s criteria.
Third, strengthen the disability policy marker. Through its membership of the OECD-DAC, the EU should advocate for the disability policy marker criteria to be better aligned with the CRPD, and with the criteria that already exist for the OECD-DAC’s policy marker on gender.
Finally, and crucially, the EC and EIB should ensure that representative organisations of persons with disabilities are meaningfully consulted and actively involved at all stages of putting these recommendations into practice.