At the Global Disability Summit (GDS) held in London in July 2018, the government of Bangladesh formally made eight commitments. Because the commitments outline specific actions and timelines, they represent a new and potentially powerful point of leverage to advance CRPD domestication in Bangladesh.
In April 2019, the 11th pre-sessional working group of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities considered Bangladesh’s initial State report (as well as civil society reports, including an alternative report from a DPO-CSO Coalition funded by DRF) on national implementation of the CRPD.
This presented an opportunity to utilize the Bangladesh GDS commitments in the CRPD reporting process. The DRF/DRAF Commonwealth Project team made a grant to support a delegation of Bangladeshi DPO representatives to participate in the pre-sessional meeting.
Prior to traveling to Geneva, DRF staff started a dialogue with the delegation on the connections between CRPD advocacy and the GDS commitments. DRF staff worked with IDA to be included in the delegation’s Geneva schedule, both as they prepared for their private session with the Committee and as they debriefed and discussed next steps. DRF staff also reviewed the Bangladeshi Alternative Report to lift out examples where leveraging the GDS commitments could strengthen arguments for CRPD compliance.
In the debrief session, DRF staff worked with the delegation to think about how the obligations created by the GDS commitments could be leveraged to better spur to resolution the issues forthcoming in the Committee’s List of Issues (LoI) for the Bangladesh government.
Lessons Learned
- The Commonwealth team quickly realized that many advocates had a superficial understanding of the Global Disability Summit and the commitments made by their government; and they had not been briefed enough about what to expect in Geneva or how to optimize the opportunity. Significant preparation was required in advance.
- There was not an immediate linkage for most between the GDS Commitments made by the Bangladeshi government and the CRPD review process. Coming to Geneva, the Commitments were seen as ‘stand alone’ targets.
- One of the most powerful moments was when advocates got that the Commitments were really there as “means” to fuel their advocacy for CRPD domestication.