Asia-Pacific Disability Inclusive Education Working Group

The goal is to realize the rights to inclusive and equitable quality education for children with disabilities across the Asia-Pacific region.

The objectives of the Working Group include:

Providing technical and advocacy-based support that leads to the inclusion of all children, not least those with disabilities into education systems and ideally mainstream schools.
Promoting a human rights-based model, which includes both removing barriers in the environment, through the social model, and empowering of learners with disabilities to participate by addressing barriers to their education that are behavioral, cultural, social, institutional, and environmental;
Facilitating the coordination in order to promote collective and high quality course of action across a wide range of actors working in the Asia-Pacific in the field of education for children with disabilities, including academics, government institutions, civil society organizations, disability persons’ organizations, faith-based organizations and other regional bodies;
Improving the technical capacity of actors working towards disability-inclusive education in the region, with special attention to
- Enhancing commitments towards inclusive education through developing or implementing policies along with adequate budget allocations for inclusive education;
- Usage of technology and digital platforms or radio programmes or context specific and relevant technology which support to reach out to most marginalized during difficult time or emergencies; and
- Strengthening systems and structures to make state and private actors more involved and responsible for education of children with disabilities;
Facilitate knowledge management, including the collection and exchange of good practices, disability-specific and disaggregated data, and resources and lessons learned on disability-inclusive education and learning;
Report on, and contribute to, the discussions and monitoring of SDG 4 led by the Learning and Education2030+ (LE2030+) Networking Group

The IDEA-P is co-chaired by the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Regional Bureau for Education (UNESCO Bangkok), United Nations Children's Fund Regional Office for East Asia and the Pacific (UNICEF EAPRO) and Leonard Cheshire, who also acts as the Secretariat. UNICEF South Asia (ROSA) will also play an active role;

The IDEA-P meet on a quarterly basis (four times per year).

The core members of the WG include:

Contact details for Working Group Secretariat: Secretariat.Diewg@leonardcheshire.org