Recommendation 17

HM Government Accepted in Part

HMG position: Partially Agree. The FCDO agrees that humanitarian response and climate change adaption policies must properly consider disability inclusion, to be confident that activity will have a positive impact on those most disproportionately impacted and at risk. However, the cross governmental scope of the role envisaged by the Committee goes beyond the capacity of the FCDO Disability Inclusion Team, which is currently comprised of a full-time resource of 7.5 officials. As the Committee notes in its report, the FCDO Disability Inclusion and Rights strategy recognises the importance of disability-inclusive humanitarian and climate action. Inclusive climate action was listed as an ‘emerging area’ of the strategy on publication in February 2022 and will now be upgraded as part of the strategy review. From a broader humanitarian perspective, the FCDO sits on the UN Disability Advisory Group (DAG), which has strong representation from key agencies and partners co-ordinating humanitarian responses. The DAG, supported through FCDO’s humanitarian core funding to the UN, includes OCHA, WFP, UNHCR, IOM, WHO and Humanity & Inclusion as members. Teams in other government departments leading on resilience planning or aspects of climate adaptation policy are working to ensure that disabled people’s voices inform policy moving forwards. This includes work being taken forward by the Cabinet Office’s Disability Unit and Resilience Directorate, to ensure that disabled people are properly engaged as part of the UK’s Resilience Review. The FCDO continues to take a ‘twin track’ approach to disability inclusion. In addition to providing targeted support to people with disabilities, this approach seeks to mainstream a disability and human rights perspective across all areas of the department’s work. In practice, this mainstreaming work is concentrated on specific intervention areas, which include humanitarian and climate action. The concept of mainstreaming recognises that responsibility for delivery lies across the whole organisation, not simply with the relevant central policy team. Towards this goal, we are carrying out a programme of work across the FCDO to build capability on equalities and inclusion. We support Posts and HQ Directorates to explore and develop new approaches to mainstream equality and disability inclusion issues into their work, for example through training, guidance, evidence products and advisory support. We also raise awareness on the importance of considering the Public Sector Equality Duty in all our work, for example in our programmes and business plans. This requires ensuring that before decisions are taken, decision makers have considered equality impacts, i.e. the need to eliminate discrimination, victimisation and harassment (as well as other conduct prohibited under the Equality Act 2010), advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between those who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not share it.