Month: December 2016

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Inclusive Education

“All are born into humankind, so all have a right to grow up and receive their education together. Breaking down all barriers that prevent this is an important part of human progress and the development of a sustainable future.” – Richard Rieser

Universal primary education is a priority of the SDGs as seen in SDG 4 to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” Two words in particular are of interest – “inclusive” and “equitable” – two concepts the world is farthest from achieving in relation to persons with disabilities (PWDs). It is estimated that between 93 and 150 million school aged children are living with a disability and many of these children face barriers that make primary education nearly impossible. As a result, many children aren’t “achieving the necessary basic skills for long term social and digital in  luxgion” (G3ICT Model Policy). According to WSIS, knowing how to use technology is a global skill for global citizenship.

There are four types of barriers to primary education that PWDs face – physical, cognitive, content, and didactical. Physical barriers fail to accommodate PWDs with a physical disability while cognitive barriers don’t accommodate for intellectual disabilities. In addition, content barriers are when information isn’t in the mother tongue of the learner and didactical barriers occur when classrooms aren’t flexible to the needs of each individual student. These barriers are not mutually exclusive and are different among each student.

According to UNICEF, every child has a right to education and “quality education is a critical component of child development and a means of self-empowerment, independence, and social integration.” Without education, children with disabilities are at risk to grow up to be emotionally and socially dependent and vulnerable to long term poverty. Therefore, in order to achieve other SDGs – like to eradicate poverty – the global development community must incorporate PWD specific policies into achieving SDG 4.

One possible solution to this issue is making information communication technologies (ICTs) inclusive for all children with disabilities. This can be done by mainstreaming technologies, creating assistive technologies for those who can’t use mainstream services as is, ensure compatibility between mainstream and assistive technologies, and make sure all media is accessible. If the development community can incorporate those components, education can be much more inclusive and the world will benefit.

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Inclusive Education

The term “inclusive education” is defined (according the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization —UNESCO) in the 2014 Model Policy for Inclusive ICTs in Education for Persons with Disabilities as, “the process of strengthening the capacity of the education system to reach out to all learners.” It is important to remember that inclusive education does not mean separate schools for through traditionally left out of the public school education system nor does it mean special classes within schools. Instead, truly inclusive education dictates the full integration of those traditionally ignored by the public education system into the mainstream classroom. Including children with disabilities into the traditional education system is often key to implementing inclusive education within a given country or region. Children with disabilities often struggle to access to education at all. A lack of education, as has been demonstrated time and time again, can have serious implications in terms of financial security and employment opportunities.

There are a variety of countries and even regions that are currently attempting to implement inclusive education policies. One region currently engaged in implementing inclusive educational policies is East Asia and the Pacific. The 2003 UNESCO report titled, “Inclusive Education Initiatives for Children With Disabilities: Lessons from the East Asia and Pacific Region” explores the success and challenges associated with the implementation of inclusive educational policies. Each chapter explores the various experiences of different countries in the region. By including children with disabilities in the education system, countries exponentially expand the options available to this vulnerable sub-group.

Aside from the ever-important human-aspects associated with implementing inclusive education policy, it is also vital to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and more specifically, SDG 4.   Lack of education among children with disabilities also poses a direct threat to SDG 4— “Ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all. “ By introducing more inclusive education policies within countries, governments are taking an active step to reducing educational inequities towards children with disabilities. This in turn, clears the way for “ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education.” Implementing inclusive educational policies also goes a great way towards achieving some of the educational goals laid out by the Convention on the Right of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Therefore, while implementing inclusive educational policies may at times by challenging, they are absolutely paramount towards achieving the SDGs and alleviating inequities that exist among children with disabilities.

 

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Efficacy of Global Frameworks

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are arguably the most well known global frameworks in recent years. As the SDGs have only come into effect in the past year, it is easier to assess the MDGs as a global framework in both its successes and its failures.

In his work, “The MDGs after 2015: Some Reflections on the Possibilities”, Deepak Nayyar provides critical reflection on the MDGs. While many works related to the MDGs focus on the problems of what did or didn’t happen with the goals, Nayyar takes a more optimistic approach that evaluates the past and presents ideas for how to move forward. Like many others, he makes the common point that the MDGs were too vague. However, unlike others, goes further to explain that the vagueness of the goals was not really the problem and that it was actually the way the MDGs were supposed to function: as general global themes. Instead, he explains, the problems came from the vagueness of implementation methods and the lack of reference to initial starting points. While Nayyar’s review is thorough, a brief summary of his recommendations for the future is as follows:

  1. There needs to be recognition of national differences and flexibility that acknowledges and allows for these differences.
  2. Inequalities must be recognized and included in assessing future data and other evaluation outputs.
  3. There needs to be stronger emphasis on the means of implementation instead of simply focusing on the ends.

In reference to our class discussions, a principle example of problems with current global frameworks, namely the MDGs, is their lack of inclusive measures. While global leaders are taking moves towards inclusive agendas, it is happening at too slow a pace. For example, persons with disabilities (PWDs) were not once referenced in the MDGs and did not even come up in published documents until the 2010 MDG Progress Report. This came FOUR years later after the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.   The SDGs mark a step forward from the MDGs as they make 11 explicit references to PWDs, but considering that there are 17 goals and 169 targets, it would seem that there is even more room for inclusion.

To quote Nayyar, “people are not just beneficiaries of development. They are the ones that can empower the people to facilitate the implementation of policies and goals” (14). While more and more global frameworks are taking steps to address criticisms of vagueness and exclusionary/non-inclusive language, there remains a need to give a voice to those who are currently unheard before we can truly regard global frameworks as successes.

 

 

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Inclusive Education

Achieving universal education is a grand challenge that has been afflicting the global community for decades. The Millennium Development Goals set out to achieve universal primary education by 2015, but obviously fell short of meeting its’ goal. Sustainable Development Goal 4: Ensure Inclusive and Equitable Quality Education maintains the commitment of the international community in achieving universal education, with an emphasis on inclusive education. Education is highly important as it the foundation for development. Specifically, inclusive education is integral for children with disabilities. According to Investigating Teachers’ Concerns and Experiences in Teaching Children With Special Educational needs in Bhutan, 80% of persons with disabilities live in developing countries.

As mentioned in Inclusive Education Initiatives for Children with Disabilities: Lessons from the East Asia and the Pacific Region, every child has a right to education as highlighted in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Disabled children are not an exception to this rule. In fact, the lack of educational opportunities offered to children with disabilities is increasingly problematic, because without education, children with disabilities “face huge barriers to full social and economic participation in society.” This is evident from our guest speaker, Mr. Nay Lin Soe. Mr Nay Lin Soe mentioned that he was initially denied education in Myanmar because of his disability. This lack of inclusive education has large implications, as Mr. Nay Lin Soe demonstrated in his presentation. In Myanmar, 53% of disabled children do not have access to primary education. A total of 1% of the population is a university graduate with a disability. Further, 85% of disabled adults are not employed. This data indicates the larger impact of the lack of inclusive education measures. More than half of all disabled children in Myanmar do not have access to education; this translates to 85% of disabled adults without employment. Persons with disabilities are subject to unfreedoms that should be guaranteed to individuals. These unfreedoms cause persons with disabilities to face barriers in social and economic participation in society, resulting in an 85% of disabled adults unemployment rate in Myanmar.

Because of this, the adoption of disability inclusive education practices is essential. Disability inclusive education is “a process of including children with disabilities in mainstream classes in a way that addresses and responds to their individual learning needs” (Inclusive Education Initiatives for Children with Disabilities: Lessons from the East Asia and the Pacific Region). However, achieving disability inclusive education is rather challenging. In an effort to make disability inclusive education less challenging, UNESCO and the Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies (G3ict) compiled a model policy document to assist Member States in developing policy geared toward inclusive education. This model is an extremely important in the effort toward achieving inclusive education.

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Efficacy of Global Frameworks

We have discussed a number of documents, conventions, and agendas in class that makeup the international framework. The MDGs, the SDGs, the CRPD, and the New Urban Agenda are all examples of international commitments that frame the direction in which the international community wants certain interest areas to take. Ideally, this framework should act as a guide to implementation. The combination of all of these documents, especially areas in which they intersect, are meant to direct individual countries toward policies that will help to meet the goals established by the international agenda. This is why signing and ratifying international documents is so important – completing these actions is a gesture of the individual countries’ leadership demonstrating to the international community that they will try to incorporate provisions of the international document in their respective domestic policy.

That being said, one of the common critiques of the international development framework is that it ignores context and promotes a one-size-fits-all approach. This is one of the many critiques of the MDGs that Deepak Nayyar points out in his article, “The MDGs after 2015: Some Reflections on the Possibilities.” It is easy to understand why a critique like this is made upon first reading the MDGs – the eight goals are broad and lack specificity. However, development is not a static process. In the ever-evolving world, we become more aware of development challenges and we collectively welcome more and better solutions to overcoming them. What is more, the MDGs were simple, but this provided for each country to decide for themselves the best way to implement them. In this way I argue against the critique that the global framework for development lacks context. Quite the opposite – the general sweeping goals allow each participating country to decide what policies they need to adopt in order to achieve the goals.

I do not mean to argue that the MDGs didn’t have room for improvement, however. Many societal groups that could benefit from development policies weren’t ensured that their leaders would act on their behalf. There were also a number of key global issues that were not addressed, such as access to energy and urban planning. The MDGs weren’t perfect – but the framework did not end there. The international community is continuously improving the global framework. The SDGs have since built upon the initiatives of the MDGs and incorporated a number of details that were previously lacking from the global framework.

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Efficacy of Global Frameworks

In the past number of years, much has been made about the efficacy of global frameworks. Nowhere is this more important than in the debate surrounding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs, which were established in 2000, sought to expand and improve development throughout the world through 8 goals. These goals included achieving universal primary education, reducing child mortality, eradicating extreme hunger and poverty, and ensuring environmental sustainability. While certainly admirable goals, the SDGs are not without their own criticisms. First and foremost, the MDGs have received criticism because although these goals were slated for completion in 2015, many of them were not reached. These shortcomings were attributed largely to the breath of the goals expressed and the lack of concrete plans associated with each goal. There were also very few monitoring or follow-up mechanisms associated with the goals. The MDGs also received criticism for not paying enough attention to vulnerable sub-groups including indigenous peoples and persons with disabilities.

However, the debate surrounding the efficacy of the global frameworks expands beyond the MDGs. Even with the relatively recent introduction of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), critiques about the feasibility and monitoring of the goals have already begun to emerge. Some say the goals still do not address certain vulnerable sib-groups adequately. However, the SDGs do also represent an attempt by international community to respond to the criticisms of the MDGs. The SDGs have a much more complex series of goals and targets than the MDGs contained. The SDGs also sought to speak more directly to vulnerable sub-groups including indigenous groups and persons with disabilities than the MDGs. They also speak more directly to cross cutting issues such as gender disparities and environmental degradation.

However, despite the criticisms extended to global frameworks both past and present, they still play an inarguably critical role in international governance. The SDGs, MDGs, and other international agreements and meetings such as the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), shape how the international community perceives, talks about, and addresses critical issues. While they may not be as efficient as some would hope, they do still guide international policy in a positive direction and address valuable issues that might otherwise not be addressed. For example, while MDG goal 2 —achieving universal primary education— was not met by 2015, illiteracy rates did decrease rapidly throughout the world. This demonstrates that while not 100% effective global frameworks do play a critical role in addressing important international issues.

 

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Intersectionality in Sustainable Development

According to The Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), “Intersectionality is a tool for analysis, advocacy and policy development that addresses multiple discriminations and helps us understand how different sets of identities impact on access to rights and opportunities.” Historically, white men have benefitted most from society (at least in the US) and all others have been substantially disadvantaged in a variety of ways. While societies have become substantially more progressive and inclusive, many people are still vulnerable and disprivileged from having a higher quality of life. This is largely in part because because people live multiple, layered identities that are rarely considered in their entirety. This is to say that often “vulnerable” people are generalized into larger groups but their personal overlap among those categorizations goes unrealized or ignored. For example, the UN developed “Major Groups and other Stakeholders” (MGoS) to better engage and incorporate specific sectors of society into sustainable development initiatives. These nine sectors of society are: women; children and youth; indigenous peoples; non-governmental organizations; local authorities; workers and trade unions; business and industry; scientific and technological community; and farmers. While this is a positive effort in achieving wider participation and consideration on global issues, it clearly falls short. For one, Persons with Disabilities are terribly ignored in this framework and they make up 15% of the world population. Moreover, intersectionalities are not supported by these groupings and thus people who carry several of these identities (which is the majority of populations) are forced into dividing their needs and thus identity. For example, a female, indigenous farmer would have to reach out to three major groups and explain how each aspect of her identity was discriminated or disadvantaged by certain policies, rather than how her problems have been a consequence of a combination of these identities and how she could be better assisted overall. This is not a inclusive nor sustainable way to achieve inclusive sustainable development. Instead, there needs to be a bottom-up approach and a wider framework for acknowledging and aiding members of more than one identity and how those identities simultaneously produce oppression. This not only illustrates how policies, programs, and services in one aspect of life are inevitably linked to others, but also provides a greater understanding of how various identities impact overall levels of opportunity, development and access to rights (AWID).

AWID: https://lgbtq.unc.edu/sites/lgbtq.unc.edu/files/documents/intersectionality_en.pdf

Major Groups: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/majorgroups/about

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The USA vs. Digital Divides

The United States of America has been at the forefront of the construction and deployment of the internet. We have also been a world leader at generating the content for it. Our country as filled the internet with everything from the complete works of Shakespeare, to an accessible way to obtain free healthcare. The United States of America has been a leader in digitization of government accessibility, and the rest of the world needs to catch up. This includes the international community. Our history of breaking internet boundaries extends from the original ARPANET through all of today’s advanced mobile phone networks. For decades, American engineers, consumers and companies have paved the way for advances in networking and computer applications. Today, nearly every American can access the Internet to some degree. The United States is actually numerically the world leader in scope of availability of advanced wireless broadband Internet services, such as 4G LTE. Unfortunately, the benefits of this long torrent of access to technology has been distributed unevenly. Millions of Americans still do not use the many services that the internet offers with any frequency or regularity. Research shows that there remains significant inequity in both Internet usage and the quality of access. This difference in access has come to be known as the “digital divide”. This deficit of access is felt worst among older, less educated, and less affluent American populations. Regionally, rural parts of the country that tend to have fewer choices and slower connections.

Closing the Divide has the potential to increase productivity and open paths to improving the quality of life of an individual or a whole population. President Obama has made expanding broadband Internet access a relatively higher priority in the past few years. Since 2009, federal government investments in closing the Divide have led to the deployment or enhancement of well over one hundred thousand miles of computer network infrastructure in the United States. In that same time, forty-five million Americans have adopted broadband internet. The President’s internet initiative titled ConnectED aims to connect virtually all American students to highspeed broadband in their classrooms in the next two years. In January of 2016, the President announced several other policies that his administration planned to take to ensure reliable broadband to more Americans at a decreased cost. These included efforts to promote community-based hardware for improving broadband and a call for State and local governments to strike down “short-sighted regulations that restrict competition”.

Inclusive Education
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Inclusive Education

Goal 4 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is: “Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning”. At this point in time, it seems that the promise of education for development would be obvious. However, there still remain huge disparities across the globe that prove otherwise; one leading case being the lack of access to education for persons with disabilities (PWDs). Of the 11 references to disabilities in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, two are in SDG 4. The first is to “ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities” and the second is to “build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, non-violent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all”. These mentions are extremely important in combatting negative stereotypes that continue to marginalize PWDs and to better ensure future participation of PWDs who have time and time again been excluded from the decision-making process.

Inclusive education, or should I say exclusive education, is a topic I first really came in contact with when I was in Nairobi. I interned with an organization that provided physical therapy to children with disabilities living in informal settlements. The organization wanted to expand their services to address a huge issue for these children and their families: most of them were not in school. There were several reasons for these children not being in school, but the leading factors were that school staff felt PWDs did not have need for education or that the students would hinder the education of other, non-disabled students. For the children that were enrolled in school, they were put in the wrong classes and/or not given the appropriate instructions. For example, one child I worked with who had cerebral palsy was obviously able to speak and I witnessed his improvement in the short few months I was with him, but his mother informed me that his teachers made no attempt to develop this skill with him. This frustrating example is one of many similar stories around the world.

While inclusive education does put additional demands on school systems that may already have little resources to begin with, it is unfair to say who does or doesn’t deserve the right to education. Additionally, as with many other areas, making education inclusive does not hurt anyone else and instead usually has benefits for the population as a whole. Finally, inclusive education must be at the forefront of development measures as it is one of the, if not the, best ways to ensure participation for PWDs so that future development agendas are truly inclusive in all areas.

 

 

 

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Multi-Stakeholder Governance

Multi-stakeholder governance can be defined as a multi-actor approach to internet governance. The concept of multi-stakeholder governance came into existence as countries and multinational corporations grappled with the concept of the governance of the internet. How the internet should be governed and even if internet governance should occur has, in recent years, been a topic of fierce debate. However, multi-stakeholder governance has emerged to a solution to the issue. In our increasingly globalized and interconnected world, multi-stakeholder internet governance is more relevant than ever before.

As explored in class, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is one means in which the strategy of multi-stakeholder governance is utilized. As explained on its homepage, the IGF is a, “Multi-stakeholder platform that facilitates the discussion of public policy issues pertaining to the internet.” The IGF, hosted by the United Nation Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), plans to will meet December 6th– 9th of this year in Jalisoc, Mexico. One group that participates in the IGF is the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN is often presented as an experiment in international governance. ICANN is interesting because it prescribes to international regime theory. That is, it believes that there are actors other than states that can influence international relations. While ICANN does contain a Government Advisory Committee (GAC), it is only a small part of the group and not a major actor. Strategies such as those implemented by ICANN and the IGF have become increasingly important as different entities vie for control over different aspects of the internet.

There are also many outside conferences that have sought to establish multi-stakeholder governance on the internet. The NETmundial conference, which met on April 32nd and 24th of 2014 in São Paulo, Brazil, explored the idea of multi-stakeholder governance. In fact, the NETmundial conference website describes the conferences as a, “Global Multi-stakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance.” The meeting, which was organized by CGI and Dilma Rousseff, established a tentative framework for multi-stakeholder governance.

I believe that internet governance will continue to be an issue for many years to come. As the internet expands and permeates many different aspects of our lives, questions about who should govern the internet and how the internet should be governed should be governed will continue to become increasingly pertinent. By addressing this issue now, the international community can avoid some undue tensions in the future.