SDGs and Their Link with Disability: SDG 1 - End Poverty In All Its Forms Everywhere

The UN measures extreme poverty as people living on less than $1.25 a day. Their state of poverty implies that they generally do not have access to healthcare, education, ownership, and natural resources. They are also more vulnerable to climate-related extreme events and other economic, social, and environmental shocks and disasters. SDG 1 encourages the creation of frameworks and supports investment in poverty eradication actions (“pro-poor public social spending” target 1. b).?

Target “1.a” of SDG 1 focuses on development cooperation to encourage the implementation of “programmes and policies to end poverty in all its forms” but does take the relationship between poverty and disability into account. Poverty and disability are part of a vicious cycle: people living with a disability are more likely to be impoverished, and people who live in poverty are more likely to acquire a disability.?

Understanding this specific relationship is key to truly ending poverty in all its forms everywhere. Disability is not only a consequence of poverty but also a cause; only focusing on “pro-poor public social spending” to end poverty without creating durable health support for everyone is inefficient.?

Many solutions to ending poverty do not take disability into consideration and, as a result, fail to help people with disabilities. Many programmes aiming to reduce poverty have safety net policies (food assistance, housing assistance etc.) but still need to expand their programmes to healthcare and health promotion. In contrast, the World Health Organisation acknowledges the role of health promotion in poverty reduction.?

It is necessary to include a health perspective when programming anti-poverty actions, especially in the Global South. 80% of the people with a disability worldwide are located in the Global South, and an estimated 66% of people living in extreme poverty are also in the Global South. Consequently, programmes aimed at “ending poverty in all its forms everywhere” should consider having health and disability as core elements of their projects in order to ensure long-term stability and avoid poverty-induced disability and disability-induced poverty.??

Some of the solutions you should include in your development programmes to achieve SDG 1 and include people with disabilities are:

• Including vaccination campaigns alongside safety net policies such as housing
• Educate the population you are targeting about healthcare, menstruation, diseases and disabilities
• Avoid having pity for people with disabilities and instead promote a positive mindset whilst encouraging the inclusion of people with disabilities
• Have local doctors involved in your programmes
• Offer screening and tests for disabilities to detect possible disabilities earlier
• Advocate for a free healthcare system to ensure everyone can access care when needed

These elements are necessary to better understand disabilities, their link with poverty and to better fight poverty induced by disability and disability induced by poverty. By including them in your programmes to end poverty, you will reduce the number of avoidable disabilities and offer a real long-term plan to enable individuals to not fall into poverty.