EDITORIAL: Bridging Communities, Advancing Rights

Dragana Ciric Milovanovic, editor

Children with disabilities remain among the most excluded groups worldwide — not only in practice, but also in the very systems designed to protect their rights. 

Despite important advances under international law, a significant gap persists between two global communities: those working on children’s rights and those advancing disability rights. This is due to some differences in the existing international standards. As a result, children with disabilities risk falling through the cracks — their voices unheard, and their rights insufficiently addressed. 

The Disability Rights Initiative for Children aims to bring disability rights closer to the child rights community to ensure that children with disabilities are no longer treated as an afterthought, but as full rights-holders whose perspectives and experiences must shape policy and practice. Led by Disability Rights International, and in collaboration with the Global Coalition on Deinstitutionalization (GC-DI) and Lumos Foundation, this initiative works to bring together these two communities — creating a true meeting place for collaboration, shared learning, and coordinated action. 

The Meeting Place does not aspire to be a comprehensive overview of all current developments. Instead, we imagine it as a brief and accessible selection of recent highlights and opinions, relevant for children with disabilities.

At its core, our work is about advancing a simple but powerful principle: every child has the right to grow up in a family and to be included in society. Through partnerships with global and regional coalitions and advocacy networks, this initiative supports disability organizations to engage more effectively in international discussions on disability and children’s rights. It also works to ensure that developments in one field inform and strengthen the other — from policymaking to programme implementation.

At the heart of this effort is a clear message: participation must be meaningful, diverse, and representative. No single voice can capture the full experience of disability — particularly when considering the diversity of children’s lives across different contexts. By fostering stronger alliances and amplifying underrepresented voices, this initiative is helping to reshape how the international community understands and advances the rights of children with disabilities.

IN FOCUS: Children need the love of a family.

“Millions of infants and children live in orphanages around the world, and aid agencies, churches and governments provide hundreds of millions of dollars in the hope that they can help vulnerable children find sanctuary in these institutions. This hope is badly misplaced. Orphanages are not safe places for children.” – Laurie Ahern, President DRI

Two recent developments emphasize the urgency of ending institutionalization and promoting the right to family for all children.

United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities issues a ground-breaking report on abuses against children and adults with disabilities in Mexico

"I grew up in an orphanage. Then they transferred me to a group home in Mexico City where I was sterilized, raped, and forced to work in the homes of the men who abused me. After DRI investigated, I was set free." – Mexican institution survivor

The UN report results from a petition, filed by Disability Rights International (DRI). DRI asked the United Nations to use its legal authority under the Optional Protocol of the CRPD to investigate atrocious abuses taking place in Mexican institutions because these abuses are widespread throughout Mexico and cause “serious and systematic” human rights violations. DRI has been working for more than twenty years in Mexico to investigate and document abuses against children and adults in institutions.   

It is rare that the United Nations conducts its own official inquiry into any form of human rights violations against people with disabilities. To instigate an official UN inquiry, DRI provided evidence to the United Nations about extensive violence, torture, and mistreatment of children and adults with disabilities in Mexico’s orphanages and other residential institutions. 

Click here to read the full UN report, extensive factual findings, and detailed recommendations.

"This important effort not only brings to light long-ignored historical realities but also charts a clear path toward the effective guarantee of the human rights of persons with disabilities, particularly their right to live independently and to be included in the community. This is an historic report with implications for every country of the world." – UN Special Rapporteur Heba Hagrass

The UN report finds that both children and adults are improperly detained in institutions. Because there are inadequate legal protections and programs to help families keep their children with disabilities at home, families are forced to give up their children. And because there is a lack of support in the community for children and adults with disabilities, many children with disabilities remain in institutions for life. 

“The UN affirmed what DRI has documented over decades: violence and abuse against people with disabilities on a massive scale throughout Mexico. In the name of “care” people are being hurt rather than helped." – Lisbet Brizuela, Director, DRI Mexico 

“They locked me up for two months in a tiny room that had nothing but a small slit and a tiny hole, and they didn't give me anything to eat. Imagine the fear and the anxiety.”  – Eduardo Verduzco, Survivor of La Gran Familia, Michoacán

Instead of being places of care and safety for children with disabilities, the United Nations found that orphanages and other institutions are dangerous and violent. Instead of waiting for years for Mexico to adopt new plans and draft new laws, the UN Inquiry calls on Mexico to “prohibit institutionalization” of children with disabilities. Since the CRPD recognized the right to “live in the community with choices equal to others” (CRPD, article 19), this is the first time the United Nations has called for a moratorium on new admissions. 

"Mexico committed itself to protecting the right of children to live and grow up with families under international law when it ratified the CRPD twenty years ago. Enough delays. Rights enforcement starts now.  It is historic that the UN is calling for no new admissions." – DRI Executive Director, Eric Rosenthal

The UN Inquiry report provides a detailed roadmap for steps Mexico must take to end institutionalization and support the right of children to live and grow up in the community. DRI has made a video showing the abuses in Mexico’s institutions and explaining the recommended reforms. You can see that video here.

"The UN Inquiry report bridges the gap in international law between children’s rights and disability rights. It addresses the issues of children and adults institutions together. If you don’t protect disability rights, you can’t protect children. And if you don’t engage disability rights groups in creating solutions, children with disabilities will be left behind." – DRI Associate Director, Priscila Rodriguez

The UN Inquiry raises especially great concern about the rise of private residential institutions that are unregulated and not supervised by government authorities where abuses may be especially severe (see para. 71-72). These are exactly the kind of private institutions often supported by foreign donations.  

The findings of the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities mark a decisive turning point: the abuses documented in Mexico are not isolated failures, but the predictable result of a system built on segregation and institutionalization—one that disproportionately harms children. As DRI has long documented, institutions are not places of care; they are environments where children and adults with disabilities are subjected to violence, exploitation, and the systematic denial of their rights. For children, institutionalization means growing up without families, without protection, and without the opportunity to develop and thrive in the community. The testimonies of survivors lay bare the lifelong consequences of this system. By calling for an immediate moratorium on new admissions and a transition to community-based services and supports, the United Nations has set a clear and urgent path forward. What happens next in Mexico will have global implications. This report is both a reckoning and a call to action: to end the institutionalization of children and adults with disabilities, to invest in the support families need to stay together, and to ensure that every child grows up in a safe, inclusive community.

A New Study by Faith-to-Action explores how U.S. Christians engage with residential care

The Barna Residential Care 2026 Report commissioned by US non-profit Faith-to-Action and the Martin James Foundation, shows that US faith-based donors give 4.5 billion annually to support orphanages around the world. The study finds that 28% of Christians in the United States report supporting orphanages for children abroad. Orphanages in Mexico are the top recipient of US funds. Of all donors who support orphanages, 22% support orphanages in Mexico.

The Barna study delves deeply into the reasons that donors give to orphanages, and it provides helpful ideas for activists and policy-makers seeking to shift funding away from institutions and toward the community. The primary reason is that it “makes them feel better.” If donors were aware of the findings of the UN Mexico Inquiry, they might feel different about these donations.

Perhaps the most disturbing finding of the Barna report is its finding that private donations to orphanages has nearly doubled from 2.5 billion to 4.5 billion in the last four years. Yet at the same time, the study finds that this increase is not linked to increased knowledge about the benefits or dangers of orphanages. The study concludes:

"Financial support for residential care has increased since 2020, largely driven by younger Christians and recurring giving models, yet this growth appears to reflect compassion and increased exposure through mission trips rather than informed preference for institutional care."

Donors clearly care about children with disabilities. Indeed, the most common reason for giving is to help children who are “sick or disabled.” The investigators asked a number of questions about what kinds of support they would provide if provided with the opportunity to do so. While support for “inclusive services” for children with disabilities would only be supported by 19% of donors, the highest percentage of donors (32%) said that they wished to stop violence against children. The findings of the UN Inquiry, which links institutionalization with violence, could provide a critical educational tool to expose the fact that funding institutionalization is perpetuating violence.

Perhaps most important, the fact that well-meaning donors support orphanages should reinforce the core recommendations of the UN Inquiry. The law in Mexico must be changed to terminate admission to orphanages. So long as the government appears to give its stamp of approval to the placement of any child in an orphanage, these will be easy targets of support for donors who assume that they would not be permitted if they were dangerous or destructive to the children they house.

RIGHTS SPOTLIGHT: Inclusive Education - A right, not a privilege

In this issue, the spotlight is on the right to inclusive education — a core obligation under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, further elaborated in the Committee’s General Comment No. 4 (2016): Right to Inclusive Education. Far from being optional, inclusive education is essential to ensuring equality, participation, and the full realization of all basic rights of children with disabilities. 

Here we offer some background, as well as the recent updates and considerations, in advancing the right to inclusive education and how it impacts children with disabilities.

Inclusive education is not just a moral imperative, but a litmus test for the health of our societies

By Jamie Cook, CeO of Inclusion International, the global network of people with intellectual disabilities and their families.

"Educational inclusion is the best thing to come to Colombia... we can do this by empowering people through knowledge." - A parent from Arauca, Colombia

​​Inclusive education remains a cornerstone of the global movement for disability rights, yet its implementation continues to face both systemic and ideological challenges. Inclusion International’s work across over 110 countries underscores a critical truth: while progress has been made in embedding inclusive practices within education systems, the reality for many children and adults with intellectual disabilities is still one of systemic exclusion. The adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in 2006 marked a watershed moment, affirming the right to inclusive education for all. However, as we celebrate the CRPD’s 20th anniversary this year, the gap between policy and practice persists, with millions of learners with disabilities still denied access to quality, inclusive schooling.

The pushback against inclusive education is multifaceted. In some regions, it manifests as outright resistance - rooted in outdated attitudes that view disability through a medical or charitable lens, rather than a rights-based one. Elsewhere, the challenge is more insidious: underfunded systems, lack of teacher training, and the absence of robust accountability mechanisms mean that inclusive policies often exist only on paper. At Inclusion International, we’ve seen firsthand how economic austerity and competing political priorities can further marginalise disability rights, with funding for inclusive programmes frequently deprioritised. Fundamentally, inclusive education is all too often viewed as an optional extra or a luxury - achievable when money is plentiful, but the first thing to be cut when public finances tighten. This undermines the human rights of those learners, but also reduces the expertise available and rolls back progress that has been made.

It is therefore a challenging time for inclusive education - and yet there are grounds for hope. At the top-level launch of the Global Education Monitoring Report recently there was a noticeable lack of focus on disability; however, it was promising that most of the governmental representatives from around the world who presented specifically mentioned inclusive education as the framing for their work. At Inclusion International, our Catalyst for Inclusive Education, a global community of experts in the field, continues to contribute to policy development around the world, paying attention to the new growing threats to inclusive education and building collective strategies to push back on them.

Considering the rising number of crises around the world, Catalyst has also been focusing on supporting members around the world to shape inclusion in education in emergencies, as will be seen in the forthcoming launch of our reports and practical tools that Organisations of Persons with Disabilities can use to advocate for systemic change. And grassroots advocacy, led by self-advocates and families, is driving change from the ground up, sharing learning and energy to maximise impact. A parent from our network who is a leader in Arauca, Colombia, captures this momentum perfectly: "Educational inclusion is the best thing to come to Colombia... we can do this by empowering people through knowledge."

The wider disability rights movement, too, is increasingly intersectional, recognising that the fight for inclusive education cannot be separated from broader struggles for gender equality, racial justice, and economic fairness. As we navigate this complex landscape, the message must be clear and consistent from all of us working in this sector: inclusive education is not just a moral imperative, but a litmus test for the health of our societies. The pushback we face is not merely about education; it is about who gets to participate fully in society - and who is left behind.

No Child Left Out: Human Rights Council Side Event on Inclusive Education in Conflict

In March, Lumos convened a side event in Geneva on the margins of the Human Rights Council’s Annual Day on the Rights of the Child, focusing on inclusive education in the context of armed conflict. The discussion brought together leading experts alongside young people directly affected by conflict to share practical approaches to ensuring safe, inclusive education in times of crisis. 

Yevhenii and Sofiia from Ukraine shared powerful reflections on growing up during war, highlighting the disruption to their education and what it means to learn in crisis. Sofiia described education as “feeling safe to think about tomorrow”, while Yevhenii urged leaders to not only rebuild education systems after crises, but to prepare them to withstand shocks in the first place. Their contributions grounded the discussion in lived experience and set the tone for a more personal and urgent exchange with panellists.

Speakers also explored policy and practice, including global efforts to protect education from attack, new guidance on inclusive education in emergencies, and trauma-informed approaches to education for survivors of conflict. As the only side event on education in emergencies during the session, it filled a clear gap and demonstrated how the rights of children with disabilities can and should be more meaningfully integrated into Human Rights Council child rights processes.

KEY UPDATES AND OPPORTUNITIES:

Global Survey & Needs Assessment on Data and Documentation of Residential Institutions for People with Disabilities 

Disability Rights International is launching a global survey to collect better information about institutions for children and adults with disabilities. 

Complete the survey here by May 20, 2026 and share this information through your networks. The survey is available in multiple languages. Additional languages will be added as they become available.

The preliminary results of the survey will be presented at the upcoming Conference of State Parties to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

BACKGROUND

Available information on the numbers and conditions of people excluded from society in closed institutions is often wrong or missing. For this reason, Disability Rights International is launching a global survey to collect better information. The objective of the survey is to understand the experiences, support needs, and barriers to better collect this kind of information. The survey will identify groups that have done this work before. With support from the International Disability Alliance (IDA), Disability Rights International (DRI) will be offering training and support to improve collection of information – especially by people with disabilities and organizations representing them (OPDs). 

Global Campaign on Children’s Care Reform Strategic Roadmap 2026 – 2030

UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has launched consultations on the Roadmap designed to guide the next steps in the Campaign on Children’s Care Reform. Draft Roadmap and accompanying documents are now available for review. Guidance and Feedback Form can help you prepare your contribution. Feedback Form should be downloaded, completed and sent to [email protected] no later than Tuesday 5th May. 

BACKGROUND

In January 2025, the then Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, David Lammy launched an initiative to transform the lives of all children globally, so that they are cared for in families and free of violence, exploitation and other harmful practices. A significant number of governments and organizations have joined the campaign by signing the Global Charter on Children’s Care Reform, calling on world leaders to work together to ensure all children are growing up in a safe, nurturing and loving family environment. 

Countries that sign the Charter are encouraged to make their own commitments describing specific actions they will take to realise the aims of the Charter. Signatories have the option to request technical assistance to support the development of commitments and/or to inform the implementation of commitments after they have been made.

The Global Coalition on Deinstitutionalization (GC-DI) issued a Statement welcoming the Charter on Children’s Care Reform and called for meaningful participation of disability rights organizations in all stages of the process.

Call for submissions to present at the Civil Society Forum at 19th Session of the Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (COSP) 

19th Session of the Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (COSP) will be held at the United Nations Headquarters, New York, from 9 to 11 June 2026. Here you can find the Provisional Agenda of the event. Final Program is not yet available.

Beside attending the main conference, civil society organizations can attend Civil Society CRPD Forum. 

The Forum is held annually, the Monday before the Conference of States Parties. This year, the Forum will be held on 8 June 2026. Civil society representatives can submit a request to present at the Civil Society Forum. Further information on the application process can be found here. 

DEADLINE TO SUBMIT: FRIDAY 29 May 2026

BACKGROUND

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) was adopted by the UN General Assembly by its resolution 61/106 of 13 December 2006. The CRPD is a legally-binding agreement between Member States who have signed the Convention to uphold, promote and protect the rights of persons with disabilities as defined in the treaty.

Article 40 of the CRPD stipulates that States Parties (signatories to the Convention) shall meet regularly in a Conference of States Parties (COSP) to consider any matter with regard to the implementation of the Convention. 

What is the Role of Civil Society in the Conference?

Throughout the negotiation process and adoption of the CRPD, persons with disabilities and their representative organizations have maintained the call of “Nothing About Us, Without Us”. This means that a Conference of States Parties to the CRPD must include the voices of persons with disabilities and their representative organizations in order to meet the standard and commitments laid out in the CRPD.

All civil society representatives interested to attend COSP19 must register with their Indico accounts at the link here: https://indico.un.org/event/1022601/

Detailed information and instructions on registration can be found at the official COSP 19 website: https://social.desa.un.org/cosp/19th-session. This website will continue to be updated by the United Nations.

RELEVANT RESOURCES

Thematic report by the Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities: Care and support for children with disabilities within the family environment and its gendered dimensions

“Many children with disabilities continue to be taught in segregated settings and away from families, including in boarding schools. Inadequate inclusive education systems are a key driver of institutionalization, exclusion and family separation." 

The July 2025 report (A/80/170) by Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities, Heba Hagrass, highlights barriers faced by children with disabilities and their caregivers to the enjoyment of their human rights, in the absence of adequate support services. She unpacks the gendered dimension of unpaid care and support to children with disabilities in the family environment, mostly provided by women. She outlines diverse measures and services to be implemented as part of inclusive and human-rights based care and support systems and makes actionable recommendations to States to protect the right to family life, prevent institutionalization and promote gender equality.

See available official languages

The report is also available in Easy-to-Read format. 

2026 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report 

On 25th March 2026, UNESCO hosted a high-level launch of the 2026 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, bringing together ministers of education, policymakers, development partners and global education experts to discuss progress and challenges in achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4). The 2026 edition focused on access and equity, highlighting trends in education participation over the past two decades and examined policies that have enabled some countries to advance faster than others.

World Health Organization Guidance: Nurturing care for children with developmental delays and disabilities: thematic brief

All children, including children with developmental delays and disabilities, need nurturing care. Nurturing care can contribute to preventing developmental delays and protect children who are exposed to risk factors, as well as improve functioning and long-term outcomes for children with developmental disabilities. This Brief outlines why and how nurturing care is relevant for children with developmental delays and disabilities. Recognizing that these children have diverse needs requiring different levels of coordinated and family-centred support, it recommends a set of actions to strengthen policies, services, communities and caregiver capabilities so that these children receive nurturing care.

GET INVOLVED:

You can help us advance disability inclusion by:

• Sharing testimonies - contribute personal experiences or examples that highlight barriers, progress, or lived realities of children and adults with disabilities
• Sharing this newsletter with your networks - help expand its reach by circulating it among colleagues, organizations, and communities who are engaged in or can support disability rights
• Proposing topics and content - suggest key issues, emerging trends, or specific areas that should be covered to ensure the newsletter remains relevant and impactful.

This newsletter is published by Disability Rights International with support from Lumos Foundation.

Disability Rights International (DRI) is a human rights advocacy organization dedicated to the protection and full community inclusion of children and adults with disabilities worldwide. DRI’s Worldwide Campaign to End the Institutionalization of Children is dedicated to promoting the recognition and enforcement of the right of all children to live and grow up with a family and not in any form of institution, orphanage, or group home. DRI is one of the founding members of the Global Coalition on Deinstitutionalization.

Lumos Foundation is an international non-governmental organisation working to realise every child’s right to grow up in a safe and loving family by transforming care systems around the world. Lumos works with governments, civil society, and international organisations to shift away from orphanages and other forms of institutional care towards family-based care and community-based services.