The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) serve as a global agenda of accountability to address and end inequalities, injustices, and prejudices that affect the world. With 17 goals and 169 indicators, the goals are a plan of action to end poverty, protect the planet and humanity, and ensure peace and prosperity.
In the quest to achieve these goals by 2030, it is imperative all women and girls — irrespective of race, gender, LGBTQIA identities, immigrant and/or refugee statuses, and more — are fully included, represented, and prioritized in the global conversation.
While Goal 5 of the SDGs and its targets seek to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, and there is a push to integrate gender equity throughout all of the sustainable development goals, it is critical to recognize the beautiful diversity and contributions of women and girls around the world, as well as their unique needs and challenges within the sustainable development agenda.
To fully achieve the SDGs, we must ensure that no woman or girl gets left behind — especially women and girls with intellectual and physical disabilities.
“People with intellectual disabilities are the most marginalized population in the world,” said Kristin Hughes Srour, Director of Global Health Community Programs for the Special Olympics, during a Google Hangout with the U.S. Fund for UNICEF’s End Trafficking Project and Together for Girls. “Women and girls with intellectual disabilities, especially in institutions, are faced with higher frequency of violence than those without.”
Often denied reproductive health care as well, Human Rights Watch reports women and girls with disabilities are also subjected to forced sterilization for “various purposes, including eugenics-based practices of population control, menstrual management, and personal care, and pregnancy prevention (including pregnancy that results from sexual abuse).”
Working to include women and girls with disabilities in international resolutions, policies and programs addressing women’s human rights and development, Women Enabled International’s work focuses on many sectors, including access to justice, violence against women and girls with disabilities, body imaging and stereotypes, and women and girls’ with disabilities who are in war and post-war conflicts.
In addition, UNICEF has outreach programs to prevent women and girls with disabilities from being trafficked.
“UNICEF has a two-fold approach to prevent violence against children. The first piece of this approach is to strengthen child protection systems from the top down, and to address harmful social norms from the bottom up,” said Hannah Gould, the End Trafficking Fellow for UNICEF USA.
Overall, women and girls with disabilities matter because their voices, participation and realities are crucial in creating a more just, inclusive and equitable world.
“In order to achieve the sustainable development goals, [women and girls with disabilities] must be included, or else we will never break the cycle of poverty, and we will not achieve those goals,” Hughes Srour said.