Secretary of State for International Development Penny Mordaunt gave a speech at the All Party Parliamentary Group on Disability, outlining her goals for the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development’s focus on disability and inclusion.

Still, it remains unclear how Mordaunt’s focus on disability will manifest in DFID’s development programs, or how she will raise the profile of disability inclusion as a cross-cutting and neglected issue on the international stage.

Value for money is about maximizing the impact of every pound spent to improve people’s lives. But we will not achieve the best possible impact without taking an inclusive approach to value for money, ensuring no one, including people with disabilities, gets left behind.

For one, DFID’s disability framework, last revised in 2015, is due an update. Others wonder whether the new push for disability inclusion will mean DFID will, for the first time, support national disability benefit programs in poor communities. Data shows that in Asia and the Pacific, less than 10 percent of disabled people have access to disability benefits, with access in Africa thought to be less than 4 percent.

Read the full article on disability-inclusive development by Molly Anders at Devex International Development