| Overview : The South African Government of South Africa is aware of the importance of disaggregated appropriate information, including statistical and research data, in formulation of policies to give effect to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the particular challenge posed by lack of a final definition of disability in all national legislation.
StatsSA, as the state agency responsible for the collection, production and dissemination of official and other statistics, including conducting of population census, and for co-ordination among producers of statistics, is fully compliant with internationally-accepted norms to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms and ethical principles in collection and use of statistics.
StatsSA has significantly remodelled its approach towards mainstreaming disability in its operations following ratification of the Convention and has aligned its annual household survey as well as census questionnaires with the Washington Group on Disability Statistics framework. However, the analysis is confined to individuals aged 5 years or older as the quality of information for children below the age of five years is usually very poor. Children are often mistakenly categorised as being unable to walk, remember, communicate or care for themselves when it is due to their level of development rather than any innate disabilities they might have. As a result, no data has been available on children aged 0-4 years from the census or StatsSA household surveys since the Washington group questions were introduced.
The UN Country Team in South Africa, in partnership with the Department of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, successfully applied for funding from the United Nations Partnership to promote the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Multi-Party Fund.
The project is aimed at achieving three complementary outcomes; namely to:
1) strengthen M&E capacity for effective oversight and advocacy for promotion of rights of persons with disabilities (UNDP-DWCPD-StatsSA);
2) establish a CRPD compliant legal and policy framework to implement provisions of the Convention in South Africa (OHCHR-DWCPD); and
3) reduce economic vulnerability of persons with disabilities (UNICEF-DWCPD).
The programme implementation is envisaged to take approximately 18 months (July 2013 – December 2014).
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