Mr. Alradi Abdalla:

I will start around this point of employment and the disability-related cost. There is the whole idea in the International Disability Alliance that we are not only advocating for disability-inclusive social protection. We also advocate for disability-inclusive social protection that contributes to the inclusion of persons with disabilities. We look at having persons with disabilities as part of the system but who also come out of the system and contribute to the inclusion. I will explain what I mean by this and draw on my personal experience as a person with a disability.

If I stay home and do not go to work, I will spend less. For example, let us say I am receiving €200 per month. I will stay home and just consume my basic income needs. If I decided to go out to work, I will spend by far more than that because I will need a personal assistant to guide me. I will need assisted devices to help me and assistance with transportation to go to my place of work. Therefore, actually having disability allowance conditioned by working status will contribute to the exclusion of persons with disabilities. It will encourage me to stay home because I will minimise my expenditure. That means that if the Government guarantees that if I go to work, I will still receive my disability allowance, I will be encouraged and incentivised to do so because what I would receive from work will still be of value as I will receive additional support to cover the disability-related costs. In summary, persons with disabilities would be in a position to go to work more than stay at home. We need social protection to contribute to this to encourage persons with disabilities to engage in the workforce.

With regard to the disability assessment, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has provided many recommendations about how the assessment should move away from a purely medical assessment to one that recognises the needs and requirements of persons with disabilities and the functional limitations. In this regard, the committee is in the process of devolving the tools that do not fully focus on the medical approach but rather start with social workers who could do the initial phase with some tools.

In certain cases they could not go further by providing the certificate. They could go for medical practitioner. At present, they only rely on social workers who could carry out the test and apply the tools. I can share details of this and share channels for the communication of this experience after this meeting.