The State of Practices of Disability-Inclusive Development at Civil Society Organisations and Disabled People Organisations in Addis Ababa

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to explore the state of practices of disability-inclusive development at Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and Disabled People Organizations (DPOs) in Addis Ababa. Qualitative case study design was employed to conduct the study. Ten CSOs and five DPOs were purposively selected for the study. They were selected due to their purported inclusive programs of social developments. All the sampled participants from the CSOs and four of the five DPOs participated in the study with detailed information about the practice of disability-inclusive development. The major result of the study revealed the prevalence of misunderstanding of  disability and disability-inclusive development trends within CSOs. This was manifested by the poor status of CSOs’ development programs. Policies and strategies were generic, exclusive of people with disability and the attempt at inclusive development was very discouraging. Such misunderstanding created lack of accessibility and service provisions for persons with disabilities. The CSOs did not create available partners with NGOs and Governmental Organizations for the move towards disability-inclusive development. The results also revealed that the central challenges for all people with disabilities were the existence of barriers in their environment. Among these attitudinal barriers was the one which created individual and institutional barriers in the move towards disability inclusive development. The participation of CSOs in disability inclusive development was not encouraging in addressing these barriers. None of the CSOs developed policy, specific strategy, plan, implementation guideline; neither did any of them allocate budget to move towards disability-inclusive development. Organizations are expected to include disability in their development endeavors, so that inclusive society can be created.

Keywords: Disability, inclusive, development, civil society, disability organization