IDDC at COSP18 – the highlights

The 18th session of the Conference of State Parties (COSP) took place on 10-12 June 2025 in New York. Once again, the International Disability and Development Consortium was well represented by its member organisations.

Whereas 2025 has been a year marked by a seismic shift by governments and their commitments to international development and humanitarian assistance, Fredrick Ouko, IDDC Vice-Chair, reminded that rights of persons with disabilities and the responsibilities of State Parties to fulfil them are clearly articulated in the Convention on the Right of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The implementation of disability inclusive commitments under global development frameworks such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its SDGs and Sendai Framework are also critical to addressing the inequity experienced by persons with disabilities. Organisations of Persons with Disabilities have a key role to play; we must ensure the systematic inclusion of persons with disabilities and their representative organisations in all future agreements.

“Now more than ever, this role of Civil Society Organisations and Organisations of Persons with Disabilities in democratic processes is critical as we face strong headwinds in relation to respecting, promoting and protecting human rights and a closing civil society space. The risk to disability rights within this context is significant, and the specific experience of those facing intersecting discrimination must be prioritized and receive a response.” (Fredrick Ouko, IDDC Vice-Chair)

Fredrick urged State Parties to increase efforts to deliver the Convention, including by: 

• Laying the foundations for inclusion for the full enjoyment of human rights, including through innovative financing.
• Measuring and monitoring inclusion and progress and setting ambitious targets with clear accountability mechanisms to ensure the progressive realisation of the Convention, including by using the OECD DAC disability inclusion marker, integrating validated and internationally comparable disability data collection tools into censuses and surveys, and acting on citizen-generated data from OPDs and disability organizations.
• Ensuring AI is used as a tool for inclusion and not exclusion and meaningfully including OPDs in consultations.
• Ensuring the rights of Indigenous Peoples with disabilities and addressing intersectional discrimination.
• Ensuring persons with disabilities and their representative organisations are central and actively involved in decision-making at and planning the World Summit for Social Development and beyond.

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Raising awareness is a key element of any COSP session and this year IDDC co-organised two official side-events focusing on:

• The launch of the WHO Global Initiative on Health Equity for Persons with Disabilities. The initiative is a significant milestone for increased investment and multisectoral cooperation to advance disability inclusion in the health sector – ensuring no one is left behind by building leadership on health equity among persons with disabilities, elevating political prioritization of disability inclusion, ensuring accessible health services, and increasing robust indicators, evidence and monitoring of progress. Hannah Loryman, Co-Coordinator of the IDDC United Nations Task Group, highlighted the critical role played by CSOs, including OPDs, from their advocacy activities that get issues such as health equity on political agendas to their technical expertise and accountability function. 
• The upcoming World Social Summit and the insights from the Global Disability Inclusion Report on Accelerating Inclusion in a Diverse and Changing World.
• Financing for Development and the opportunities to accelerate funding for disability inclusion. Only 0.3% of ODA targets persons with disabilities, despite representing more than 15% of the global population. Speakers, among those, Frederick Ouko, IDDC Vice-Chair, emphasized that closing this gap requires more than political will: we need better data, stronger tracking mechanisms, and inclusive financing strategies co-designed with OPDs. A separate IDDC blog article specifically dedicated to financing for development will soon be released.

“The Global Disability Inclusion Report is an important contribution to overcoming a major barrier for disability-inclusive development, the lack of data. The event highlighted that GDIR is a multi-stakeholder effort. We now finally have more data on understudied areas such as disability- Inclusive development financing. We are proud to have made our contribution as IDDC. The task now is to popularize the data and, together with OPDs, use it in our advocacy.” (Veronika Hilber, CBM – Christian Blind Mission)

Other important meetings happened in and around COSP18. As usual, COSP was preceded by the Civil Society Forum on June 9th where we moderated the panel on empowering persons with disabilities and enhancing social development policies through innovative financing. We also attended the Steering Committee meeting of the Global Action on Disability Network and the Steering Committee meeting of the Global Disability Fund, formerly known as  the United Nations Partnership on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, where a new Strategy for the coming five years was adopted .

Last but not the least, CoSP18 was the perfect momentum to announce our renewed partnership with the International Disability Alliance that aims at optimising both networks joint impact in promoting and monitoring the effective implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as well as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

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