Over the past decade, AGENDA has built the capacity of 600 persons with disabilities in 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries through public awareness-raising activities, dialogues, and skills-building workshops such as government advocacy training and policy platform workshops. As a result of AGENDA’s advocacy and public awareness-raising activities, government ministries across ASEAN understand the importance of utilizing the expertise of persons with disabilities and their networks in designing and implementing inclusive human rights policies.
AGENDA has successfully built a community of practice between persons with disabilities and their organizations, civil society organizations (CSOs), and government institutions. AGENDA has put its advocacy in effect through contributing to building the ASEAN Enabling Masterplan 2025 (Enabling Masterplan) which serves as a stakeholder-inclusive model for ASEAN to approach other human rights issues.
OPDs have strengthened their advocacy through knowledge exchange and sharing good practices with one another creating strong synergies across regional OPD networks in Enabling Masterplan implementation. The side event will focus on the challenges and successes of disability rights advocacy in Southeast Asia and highlight the work regional and national level OPDs have done to mainstream the Enabling Masterplan. The panel will feature AGENDA disability rights advocates from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore who have experience working with OPDs, CSOs, and government institutions to conduct disability rights advocacy in ASEAN.
AGENDA will organize a side-event at the Global Disability Summit on February 16, 2022, at 5 PM Bangkok time. Please register here: https://bit.ly/EnablingMasterplan