101642


Disability and Inclusive Development: Sharing, Learning and Building
Alliances




Remarks at the
2004 World Bank International Disability Conference
By
James D. Wolfensohn
President
The World Bank Group
Washington, D.C., December 1, 2004


Let me thank you all for coming today. For those who were here two years
ago, you will remember that we were a little nervous that we had never
had such a gathering in the Bank before. I was a little nervous because
I was worried as to whether or not we could establish the sort of
partnership of trust that I was looking for.

I have to say after the two intervening years, I feel that some of the
most important relationships that I've established and some of the more
important work that I've done has, in fact, been in trying to unlock the
opportunities for 600 million people or more who have one form of
disability or another, but who have with these disabilities tremendous
competencies that we need to unlock and to make contributing to the
society in which we all live.

I'm particularly happy today to welcome a number of representatives that
are here to join us. I think you know today is the United Nations
International Day of Disabled Persons, and I'm happy that we have
representatives here from ILO, WHO, UNICEF, UN DESA, UNESCO, IDB, and
development agencies from Norway, Finland, Italy, England, Germany,
Denmark, Sweden, and Japan.

But I'd also like to pay a special personal tribute to someone who is
here sitting in the front row with whom I have a much longer
relationship, and that's Eunice Shriver. And Eunice, as you know, is the
President of the Kennedy Foundation and has done just extraordinary work
in the field of disabilities and, in particular, in mental disabilities
and, in particular, with the Special Olympics. She for me is an icon.
I've been happy to know her and privileged to know her for a long time.
And in my early work in disabilities years ago, when I was President of
the World Multiple Sclerosis Federation, I talked to Eunice--she may not
even remember--about how she got organized in her own field. And I just
want to pay special tribute to you and thank you for being with us here
today, Eunice.
[Applause.]

MR. WOLFENSOHN: I also should say that she helped to provide two Kennedy
fellows to us, Daniel Mont and Yagin Habtes, and Daniel is now employed
by us here at the Bank, so I'm especially grateful for that also.

And I'm also very grateful to all of you here from the international
disabled community because there is absolutely no doubt that there is no
way that our institution could function effectively in trying to support
you and in trying to make the question of disability not a Christmas tree
ornament, as Judy said, but something that is central to our lives
without your trust and without the work that we're doing with you.

I know that we were late, much later than I would have wished, but I'm
really proud to tell you that in these intervening two years, the
progress in this institution has been just remarkable. It only took an
explanation to most of my colleagues of the fundamental issues that were
shown in that movie to have them immediately come on board and say, "Why
have we not done more?"

It has not been a question of me sending poor directives from the
President's office. It's been a question simply of exposing to the
greater number of my colleagues the issues. Given that people here are
deeply concerned and devoting their lives to the question of poverty and
to the question of peace, when we simply said that there is a group of
600 million people who not only have one form or another of personal
handicap, but who are ignored in many of the countries in which we
operate, so that whatever problems they have are magnified in terms of
not just of them but of the total community. As soon as we brought that
very simple fact to the fore, colleagues in all the regions have come
together with interdisciplinary groups to ensure that in the projects in
which we're operating, the issue of disabilities is not an afterthought.
It is not some gloss that is put on later, but that we are learning, and
we are learning every week and every day, that we're learning to try and
understand that society as a whole means society as a whole. It doesn't
just mean a group of society who are fully endowed with their capacities
and facilities.

And so for us, in a way, it has been an enriching experience also inside
the institution because we've had experiences like this before.
Curiously, for quite a number of years, the issue of women, the issue of
gender was an issue that was by early predecessors of mine given a
backward place until we discovered that the key to development was, in
fact, gender and that the secret weapon for development was, in fact,
women.

We also have been looking in these recent years at the issue of youth;
2.8 billion of the 6 billion people on our planet are under 24 years of
age, 1.8 billion are under the age of 14. We were doing a lot with youth
in terms of education and programs. But in terms of taking a focus and
saying youth are really a force, youth have their special needs, youth
indeed are the future, we were looking at youth as something in a rather
patronizing way of older people trying to set out the future for young
people. And Victor was at a meeting of young people at the first meeting
we had in Paris, where I was making some patronizing comments to the
young people about their future. And one of them said to me, "Mr.
President, we are not the future. We are the now."

So I learned about that, and I'm very happy to tell you that in every one
of the meetings that we have had with young people since then, including
the Sarajevo meeting, including a meeting I just had two weeks ago in
India, we have ensured right from the beginning that we had with that
group, integrated into the group, young people with disabilities. And
what has been fascinating to me and wonderful for me is to see that the
next generation understands that society is a blend of people, is a
mixture of people. And I think Victor is as much a member of that group,
maybe more a member of the group than most of them because he's quite
outspoken, I have to tell you.

And there are some others in the picture who also have become leaders,
and so we're looking to the next generation to be a generation that just
doesn't make distinctions and where we have an inclusive society.

So these last two years have been a real learning trip for our
institution. I don't believe we have by any means accomplished what we
can, but the opportunities have become enormously clear to us of what we
can do together.

We've had to try and enhance the knowledge of our personnel because all
too many of our personnel were unfamiliar with the sort of issues that
have been addressed today. And we have had training sessions and we have
had courses really throughout the world. And, again, I want you to know
that the reaction has not been one of, "Oh, gosh, this is yet another
thing we have to do." It has been a reaction of, "This is right, this is
a partnership, this is something which is necessary." And, in fact, if
we are to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, which, as you know,
was set at the year 2000, about getting rid of poverty, about dealing
with education for all, about halving the rates of mortality in birth and
for children, it is simply impossible to conceive of doing that without
inclusion of this community. Impossible.

We started on this and I made a grant of $500,000 from a little cache of
money that I keep secret from the Board of Directors. I'm sure our
Executive Director will not tell anybody about it. But, anyway, we put
this money forward from the so-called President's Contingency Fund, and
this was the stimulus that allowed us to move forward to be able to
create the sort of environment that we have here today. And as you can
see from the film, we've also enriched our own working staff with
colleagues who are showing us the extent of their capacities and not just
on issues related to disabilities but doing full-line jobs in terms of
the operations of this enterprise. And that itself is another example, I
think, of the way in which things are working.

In fact, the young lady there who is without hearing is, in fact, one of
my assistants, and she is fantastic, and we are expanding the range and
content of people that are coming in here.
We also started something else since we last saw you called the Global
Partnership for Disability and Development, because we recognized that as
an institution we are sort of neophytes in this and that the best way to
approach it was to try and work with the UN. I'm very grateful,
Ambassador, that you're here--with NGOs, with different governments, with
foundations and institutions. And this Global Partnership for Disability
and Development was initiated by us, and I'm very, very happy to say that
we had the first meeting in Rome, I think in December last year, we had
another organizing meeting in May of this year. This is not just another
group, for there are already too many groups. This is an informal, if
you like, connection of people to try and allow us to help each other and
I think also to engage in an effective a way as possible the strength of
our institution in the development field. And I'm very happy to say that
it looks as though a couple of countries that are represented here today
have agreed to fund a trust fund that will allow this to carry on for the
next five years and allow us to move forward.

Another area that we also ran into was data collection. How do you make
a case without data? You can do it intuitively, and it's obviously--you
can make a lot of intuitive claims. But we put $285,000 in a group here
called the Washington Group on Disability Measurement, and that has
become a very important group, so far as we're concerned, with results
already being shown from Uganda, Serbia, Honduras, Brazil, and Bosnia.
And we're gradually now trying to build up as a standard part of our
activities, gathering information that can be used then as evidence as we
try and get action.

In our work on HIV/AIDS, it's not surprising to many of you in the
disabled community that public announcements that are made don't really
get to people without hearing and visual announcements don't get to
people without sight. And you will also know that the notices to address
the question of prevention both from sexual contact and from drug use
have not been really apparent in the development community. And you'll
also know very well that the issue of treatment in terms of persons with
disabilities has really been disastrous.

And so we have published a small paper on this, and we're now seeking to
make people understand that exposure to HIV/AIDS and to other
communicable diseases is something which is just as apparent in the
community of disabled as it is anywhere else.

Now, this is something for which the penny had not dropped for most
people that were engaged in the issue of the fight against HIV/AIDS, and
we have now been able to put that on the front burner.

I've already said that on youth we have been fully engaged. On the
questions of education, I might add that here, too, we have done a great
deal, but I don't want to give you yet another catalogue of what we have
been doing. But let me simply say that the issue of inclusive education
has become a very important element in our own education program.

So what I'm trying to tell you is that there's a lot that has been going
on and that the Bank is moving forward and that we're a powerful ally.
But let me say with humility that I think for us, those of us who are
leading this inside the institution, we have the feeling that we're
literally just at the beginning--just at the beginning--of the
partnership. We have a sense of the possibilities, but what we don't yet
have is the texture of the relationships. We don't yet have in the
institution the human understanding. We don't yet have in the
institution the empathy. We don't yet have in the institution the
instinct for issues that face so many people who have lived their lives
with one form of handicap or another.

And what we're looking to do is not to just have a list of
accomplishments, a list of things that you might expect we would do. But
we're trying very hard to internalize the issues that face us in this
context. And this internalization, this sense of giving feeling to the
issues, this sense of getting an automatic response inside the
organization is really our task for the next several years. It's to make
everyone in the place instinctively conscious, emotionally conscious of
the issues that face the community with disabilities, be they mental or
physical. And to do it with a sense of both understanding and normalcy,
that this is not something on the outside, this is something that is
central to our work.

And it's for that particular reason that we are looking forward to this
second meeting that we're having here, and we will look forward to
further meetings that are held in the Bank.

I want to assure you that this organization is not just a bureaucratic
organization. We had to get through some bureaucracy. But the big
change since we saw you two years ago is that you now have a human
organization, looking at this set of issues, growing all the time in
terms of the numbers in the institution. And we will achieve this and
become a partner of yours only with your help. We need your trust. We
need you to be forgiving. We need you to understand that when young
people start walking, they can trip, but that it's worth it because we
truly believe that as the single most important development institution
in the world, it is essentially that we have this partnership with your
community. And speaking for all my colleagues, I want you to know that
we're committed to building that partnership, not in a bureaucratic way
but in a way that is intuitive, in a way that is human, and in a way that
allows us to have a family together, to face the future together, and to
give us all a chance of peace in our time.

Thank you very much.