Atlas Alliance
Global Disability Summit 2025 in Berlin
Germany will be hosting the third Global Disability Summit on the inclusion of persons with disabilities. akzente answers the most important questions on the summit.
- What is the Global Disability Summit, and who will be attending?
- Where and when will the Global Disability Summit 2025 take place?
- When was the first Global Disability Summit held?
- Why is such a summit necessary?
- What are the aims of the Global Disability Summit?
- What does inclusion have to do with development?
- In what ways is GIZ involved in the Global Disability Summit 2025?
What is the Global Disability Summit, and who will be attending?
The summit is an international meeting on the topic of inclusion. Its aim is to promote the rights of persons with disabilities who continue to face discrimination in most countries around the world despite declarations to the contrary. Representatives of governments, organisations of persons with disabilities, multilateral organisations, the private sector and civil society will be attending. They will discuss how the global community can achieve genuine equal opportunities.
globaldisabilitysummit.org
Where and when will the Global Disability Summit 2025 take place?
The Global Disability Summit will take place in Berlin on 2 and 3 April. It will be co-hosted by Germany, Jordan and the International Disability Alliance (IDA). Within the German Government, the German Development Ministry (BMZ) is responsible for the summit. The meeting usually takes place every three years, but the summit sees itself as a continuing mechanism for promoting the topic of inclusion, particularly in the Global South.
When was the first Global Disability Summit held?
The first global summit on the rights of persons with disabilities took place in London in 2018 and was co-hosted by the United Kingdom, Kenya and IDA. Some 1,200 delegates attended. Norway, Ghana and IDA co-hosted the summit three years later, which was held only virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The summit has traditionally been co-hosted by a country from the Global North and one from the Global South and the permanent co-host IDA. This time it is Germany’s turn to co-host the event with Jordan and IDA.
Why is such a summit necessary?
According to the United Nations, around 1.3 billion people in the world live with one or more disabilities, which is around 16 per cent of the global population. Most of them are not born with a disability but have one caused by disease or injury. In other words, it can happen to anyone. Nevertheless, a large number of people with disabilities still cannot participate equally in their societies. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) from the year 2006 is still not being implemented by all signatory states. It is therefore important to keep the topic on the international agenda and work to achieve further progress.
What are the aims of the Global Disability Summit?
Among other things, the summit aims to underscore the obligations arising from the UNCRPD and promote its implementation at international level. The Convention distances itself from a policy of charity and compensation for alleged deficits. Rather, it regards all persons as having equal rights and demands that all aspects of society be designed in a way that enables full access for people with disabilities. This also applies to economic participation and access to education. Accordingly, the summit will discuss pathways for enabling inclusion to be lived even more fully, such as approaches for more closely integrating persons with disabilities into political processes and ways of anchoring inclusion aspects even more strongly in international cooperation. The motto of the meeting is ‘Nothing about us, without us’. The summit will end with a closing statement and a number of specific voluntary commitments.
What does inclusion have to do with development?
In countries of the Global South, inclusion is a particularly important concern because it creates the foundation for sustainable development that involves all people. This applies directly to the states themselves, but indirectly also to international cooperation, which aims and strives to incorporate accessibility more strongly into its projects and programmes. The topic of inclusion and development cooperation will therefore be a focal theme of the Global Disability Summit.
In what ways is GIZ involved in the Global Disability Summit 2025?
GIZ will be represented at the summit. In addition, the Global Programme on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities is supporting the German Government with preparations for the summit in Berlin.
