The Higher Council for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (HCD), in cooperation with the International Disability Alliance (IDA), held yesterday, via remote videoconferencing, the second webinar in preparation for the regional preparatory summit that will be held in early November in Jordan as part of the Kingdom's preparations for the Global Disability Summit that will be chaired by His Majesty King Abdullah II and the German Chancellor in 2025.
The webinar , which was attended by 90 participants and representatives of international organizations, civil society organizations, organizations of persons with disabilities, the Jordanian Coalition for Persons with Disabilities, and a number of UN agencies, aims to stimulate international cooperation and emphasize regional needs and priorities in the Middle East, Africa, Australia, and a number of Asian and Latin American countries.
In his opening speech, Dr. Muhannad Al Azzeh, Secretary General of HCD and head of the Summit preparation team in Jordan, stressed the high priority that the Council gives to consultation and engagement with organizations of persons with disabilities to effectively reflect their views, identify their needs and priorities that can be raised at the Third Global Disability Summit in 2025, and encourage them to make commitments in cooperation with state governments, the private sector and international donor organizations.
Al-Azzeh pointed out that Jordan, as an organizer of this summit in partnership with the German government and the International Disability Alliance (IDA), covers not only the Arab region in its rounds of consultations with stakeholders, but also developing countries, so it was keen in the series of preparatory webinar it organizes to participate in the participation of activists from the disability movement in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Al-Azzeh added that Jordan, Germany and IDA are in the process of developing a final declaration for the upcoming summit, committing countries to allocate 15% of their development project allocations to the inclusion of persons with disabilities and developing their conditions. The declaration also emphasizes the responsibility of governments in developing countries to provide financial allocations and budgets to the inclusion of persons with disabilities into national projects.
Al-Azza also stressed that the regional summit to be organized by HCD in Amman in November will bring together a number of representatives of organizations of persons with disabilities and representatives of governmental and voluntary sectors and international organizations from different countries of the world.
The webinar included a number of sessions and presentations on the initial topics identified for the next Global Summit 2025 and how they were determined, and the preparatory stages that preceded its final form, which included holding 20 consultative sessions with the participation of 400 representatives of stakeholders from persons with disabilities and their organizations, civil society organizations and international organizations in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. The presentations also included a space for discussion and dialogue on two main topics of the Summit: Inclusive tourism, and emergency crises: Armed Conflict and Climate Change.
Alia Zureikat, Advisor to His Highness the President of HCD and Director of International Relations and Cooperation at HCD, emphasized the need to highlight the lost opportunities behind the lack of an inclusive tourism community or an inclusive tourism experience that includes all tourism facilities and places, as the number of potential tourists with disabilities around the world is 1.3 billion and 300,000 people are deprived of the tourism experience, and the financial implications that benefit the host countries by attracting this number of potential tourists.
Abdul Qader Suleiman, Executive Director of the Jordanian Coalition for Persons with Disabilities, presented an overview of the consultative sessions organized by the Coalition with organizations of persons with disabilities, international organizations and government agencies to identify priorities within the themes of the upcoming World Summit.
José Maria Vieira, Executive Director of IDA, stressed the importance of presenting joint commitments that are applicable from the scope of political will to the scope of implementation, while emphasizing the need to find clear mechanisms for accountability and follow-up on the implementation of these commitments through the platform of commitments of countries for the Global Disability Summit 2025, which was launched by the three hosts.
The first Global Disability Summit was held in London in 2018, and the second summit was held in Oslo in 2022. The next Global Disability Summit in 2025 will be held in cooperation between the Jordanian government, the German government, and the IDA on April 2 and 3, 2025 in Berlin.