Summary of Lessons Learned at International and Regional Levels

Findings at the International Level

The review of international experiences shows that the main challenges facing the more developed countries with respect to persons with disabilities are their low employment rates, their high dependence on benefits and the increased public spending on disability assistance. In order to overcome these challenges, countries are moving away from the compensation or passive benefits approach towards more active disability management and mainstreaming. However, both continue to run in parallel and complement each other. 

In terms of legislation, current research on the effectiveness of the quota systems indicates that this method alone is not stimulating employment for persons with disabilities in real terms. Furthermore, in the contemporary context of equal opportunities and rights, this type of legislation becomes obsolete unless a number of conditions are met, namely, the availability of suitable and accessible jobs, and the appropriate rehabilitation and training of workers in occupations that are demanded by the labour market. 

In addition to more traditional approaches, such as sheltered employment, legislation and employment quota obligations, several measures have been introduced with the purpose of facilitating the matching process between people with disabilities and employers’ requirements. These include new vocational training and rehabilitation programmes, financial assistance for the adaptation of infrastructures and workplaces, wage subsidies and tax incentives. Nevertheless, these interventions have not been fully successful given that they rest on a fragile model that considers people with disabilities as a category of workers who need special treatment. Depending on the legal environment, anti-discrimination policy is seen as a complementary venue for realizing labour market integration for persons with disabilities by equalizing them with others and considering their placement on the basis of their merits and skills. 

Findings at the Regional Level

From a regulatory perspective, the statutes and laws on disability in the ESCWA region are too general and do not differentiate between the different types of disability, except for pension schemes provisions that only distinguish between partial, severe, temporary and permanent disabilities. 

In all ESCWA member countries, there is greater emphasis on “what should be done, by whom and how”, rather than on practical plans of actions, results-based programming and impact assessment.  Coordination mechanisms between the different authorities in charge of policy design, implementation, enforcement and evaluation remains unclear. Furthermore, it is common to find that the main entity responsible for policymaking and implementation resides with the government and few consultations are carried out by other concerned stakeholders, namely, employers’ associations, workers’ unions, civil society organizations and persons with disabilities, whose lives are the most affected. In many instances, governmental entities suffer from weak political commitment, are low on human and financial resources and/or are not sufficiently empowered to enforce legislation. 

A number of initiatives addressing disability are emerging to address some of these problems. Among them are the adoption of a more comprehensive approach that includes free health-care services, income-generation activities and rehabilitation programmes, in addition to tax exemption measures aimed at increasing accessibility to transport and assistive technologies and the expansion of rehabilitation and training services in cooperation with NGOs. 

While these interventions have provided support and relief for persons with disabilities, they fall short in terms of helping them to achieve their full rights to education, employment and civic participation. Furthermore, the extent to which community-training programmes respond to the actual needs of the labour market remains to be questioned. 

It is also worth noting that in the global survey of government actions in the implementation of the Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities, which was carried out in 2005, the Arab region scored high on the specific actions related to hiring, promoting, work benefits and wage increases of persons with disabilities, compared to other developing countries. However, implementation of income maintenance and social security measures ranged between 40-50 per cent, compared to 70-90 per cent in Europe and 10-30 per cent in Africa and Latin America.[1]  According to the survey, this can be largely attributed to the lack of resources or because the financial support of persons with disabilities is considered the responsibility of their families rather than society at large or the State in particular.

Nevertheless, one of the main challenges confronting the full integration and economic participation of persons with disabilities in the region is that disability is not fully approached as a human-rights issue. Persons with disabilities are not always provided with equal opportunities, particularly with regards to employment, and adequate policy interventions are constrained by the absence of reliable, disaggregated disability statistics. Furthermore, programmes to prevent disabilities or mitigate their effects, such as social security systems and targeted cash transfers, are also not well developed and suffer from low coverage, financial instability and poor governance.