Enabling A Global Human Rights Movement for Women and Girls with Disabilities: Global Disabled Women’s Rights Advocacy Report

Conceptual Analysis and Assessment of the Funding Landscape

By Stephanie Ortoleva, President & Legal Director, Women Enabled International

In WEI’s mapping report Survey, women with disabilities leaders and organizations worldwide highlighted an urgent need for greater collaboration and funding. Globally there are a few but a growing number of country-based organizations which focus on the rights of women and girls with disabilities, which are composed of and led by women with disabilities ourselves. As the “Enabling a Global Human Rights Movement for Women and Girls with Disabilities” report shows, many of these organizations were established at the dawn of the 21st Century, some 57 organizations out of the 90 surveyed were founded after 2000. In many places women with disabilities work in isolation for their rights, or are part of larger disability rights organizations often run by men. In these contexts, many women with disabilities find their issues are marginalized and do not receive sufficient focus, for a wide variety of complex reasons.

Additionally, women’s rights organizations rarely include issues concerning women and girls with disabilities in their advocacy agenda and often women with disabilities do not feel welcome in such non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), often because activities are not accessible or because some women’s rights organizations do not consider issues concerning women with disabilities to be “women’s issues,” based on a variety of erroneous stereotypes. WEI’s research also revealed that the experiences of women and girls with disabilities are frequently overlooked in both state and civil society submissions to United Nations (UN) treaty bodies, to the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), and to other UN mechanisms.

Despite these realities, fortunately, around the world there are a small but growing number of country-based organizations which focus on the rights of women and girls with disabilities and which are composed of and led by women and girls with disabilities ourselves. In those countries with such organizations, these organizations often struggle from a lack of funding, and as the “Enabling a Global Human Rights Movement for Women and Girls with Disabilities” report discloses, the average budget of a women with disability organization is approximately $100,850 USD. Furthermore, these organizations also have limited resources on organizational capacity building, fundraising, and fiscal management, as well as minimal access to leadership skills training and technical assistance.