ObjectivesFund scope
Fund Scope
The Global Disability Fund (formerly UN PRPD MPTF) was established in 2011 to respond to the global need to accelerate CRPD implementation at national level. Since 2012, the Fund has implemented over 108 joint programmes that have benefited more than 350 million people across 93 countries. Its five-year strategies, the most recent of which is Strategy 2025-2030, are adaptive and responsive to the needs of persons with disabilities in a variety of contexts and across different thematic areas.
The Global Disability Fund is the only UN inter-agency, multi-stakeholder funding mechanism dedicated to accelerating the implementation of the CRPD, playing a unique role in advancing the rights of persons with disabilities through joint programming initiatives at the country level, bringing different UN entities together along with government, persons with disabilities, and civil society.
Scope and Theory of Change
The Fund’s scope and Theory of Change are outlined in detail in the Global Disability Fund Strategy 2025-2030. The Strategy builds upon twelve years of experience investing locally and nationally, improving standards, building capacity, convening stakeholders. The strategic direction and cross-cutting thematic areas of the strategy have been carefully designed to ensure maximum impact on persons with disabilities and the systems and structures that support them.
GDF targets results across seven interconnected goal areas that create compounding, holistic, long-term change towards a world where the rights of persons with disabilities are promoted, protected, and fulfilled, and all persons with disabilities enjoy full and equitable participation in society. Delivering inclusive services, structures, systems and policies across these goal areas will offer substantial and lasting impacts on the lives of persons with disabilities.
Uniquely positioned as a convening, coordinating Fund, GDF aims to deliver work at the nexus of two or more of these interconnected goals in all of its programmes. Results in these areas will lead to the greatest measurable and lasting impacts on the lives of persons with disabilities. Moreover, GDF’s focus on interconnected goal areas allows it to concentrate resources effectively, accelerate progress, and achieve models of success that can be scaled globally.