Disability Rights Fund
Opening Spaces for Advocacy
Opening Spaces for Advocacy
Our advocacy and partnerships aim to address under-explored issues and bridge gaps by fostering collaboration across human rights movements. This intersectional approach strengthens solidarity and is essential for the disability movement to grow and fully realize its potential.
Advocacy
We support grantee partners by creating opportunities, offering platforms, and serving as a convener for underrepresented groups of persons with disabilities in the Global South. This includes facilitating participation of organizations of persons with disabilities (OPDs) in regional and global human rights forums so they can influence and shape an inclusive human rights agenda.
We also advocate for increased and more equitable funding for disability-led organizations by engaging with donors. Through meaningful dialogue, we challenge the philanthropic sector to confront its ableism and live up to its commitments on diversity, equity, and inclusion by resourcing the full diversity of disability rights movements.
State of Philanthropy
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Merely 3% of all human rights funding resources disability rights
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A charity model of giving persists
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The equity rhetoric of philanthropy does not match the glaring funding gaps
More & Better Funding
DRF will engage with funders to activate new, more, better funding for disability movements. Our aim is to provide essential resources to DRF, disability movements, and other stakeholders, enabling them to dismantle ableism and foster cultures of accessibility and inclusion.
Strategic Partnerships
Strategic Partnerships is a funding stream that promotes movement building, addresses intersectional and emergent issues that are relevant for the disability movement in DRF target countries and beyond. Strategic partnerships capitalize opportunities for mutual learning between DRF and partners and advocacy to drive change together on new and evolving issues pertinent to disability movements.
Funding eligibility: Upon invitation.
Current Strategic Partners
Disability Justice Project
This partnership seeks to strengthen the alumni network of the Disability Justice Project (DJP) to support their media fellows' development and expanding impact. DRF funding will resource continued investment in DJP’s efforts to train members of the disability rights community, driving narrative change and advancing inclusive storytelling.
Association of Women in Development (AWID)
This partnership aims to cultivate deeper relationships and exchange between women with disabilities and feminist organizations associated with AWID in Fiji, Samoa, and PNG, sparking a long-term process that supports meaningful inclusion, engagement, and participation of women with disabilities from Pacific Island Nations in mainstream feminist activism.
Women Enabled International (WEI)
This partnership seeks to build a critical evidence to document the unique and disproportionate violations of the right to legal capacity experienced by women and gender-diverse persons with disabilities in the context of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR).
National Indigenous Disabled Woman Association—Nepal (NIDWAN)
This partnership aims to highlight the intersection of disability, Indigeneity, and gender within and across key constituencies at the regional level, while connecting these efforts to the global stage.
Children Rights Innovation Fund (CRIF)
This partnership supports a pooled fund led by CRIF and We Trust Fund to advance youth rights through participatory grantmaking. Donors will engage with youth to learn, plan, and fund initiatives driven by youth movements. The goal is to transform donor and NGO systems for meaningful youth engagement, fostering equitable collaborations. Additionally, the fund aims to influence philanthropy by prioritizing youth-led, self-defined initiatives.
Asean Disability Forum
This partnership aims to revitalize the independent network of women with disabilities in Asia and the Pacific region.
Instituto Jô Clement
This partnership seeks to ensure active participation of persons with disabilities in the C20, the G20 Civil Society Platform and to advocate within various working groups for the inclusion of disability issues in the resolutions to be adopted by G20 leaders in November 2024 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa (ISLA)
This partnership seeks to strengthen the capacity of lawyers with disabilities with over three years of continuous support to help them apply feminist approaches to strategic litigation. Our goals are also to strengthen the Feminist Litigation Network and their partner Institutions so they can better support strategic litigation efforts.
Commonwealth Disabled People's Forum (CDPF)
This partnership seeks to support CDPF to secure legal registration, develop essential internal documents, improve the efficiency and reach of the Secretariat, and deepen engagement with the Commonwealth Secretariat.
Global Disability Summit 2025
The Global Disability Summit (GDS) is a unique global mechanism that aims to advance the rights and inclusion of persons with disabilities, particularly from the Global South, by bringing together governments, organizations of persons with disabilities (OPDs), civil society, and the private sector. Since 2018, the Disability Rights Fund (DRF) and our sister organization, the Disability Rights Advocacy Fund (DRAF), have been resourcing OPDs in the Global South to secure commitments from their national governments through GDS mechanism and monitor the implementation.
GDS 2025
Our participation in GDS 2025 in Berlin was rooted in a clear purpose: amplify grassroots voices, strengthen global advocacy networks, and secure meaningful national commitments to disability inclusion. DRF co-hosted key pre-summit events and supported a powerful delegation of 18 disability rights activists from across Africa and Asia. DRF also made commitments to resource disability rights movements, build collaborative advocacy, and support the monitoring, tracking of governments’ commitments to ensure accountability.
Learn more about DRF’s advocacy efforts and commitments for GDS 2025 here.
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