Lisa Morris,4 Claire Walsh,5 Amba Salelkar6 and Jo Dempster7
Abstract Safeguarding refers to specific actions that reduce the risk of abuse, neglect, and harm. It is an essential aspect of all development programming and research, but due to existing social structures and entrenched power inequalities, it is particularly important in development programming and research focused on people with disabilities. This article reflects on implementation experience relating to disability-inclusive safeguarding from the UK aid-funded Disability Inclusive Development Inclusive Futures programme. It details efforts taken to design and implement participatory safeguarding approaches and activities through partnering with Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs). The article unpacks practical examples of inclusive safeguarding while also identifying challenges in forming equitable, proportional partnerships between international non‑governmental organisations and OPDs. It concludes by raising questions about how power, partnerships, sustainability, and solidarity impact on safeguarding for global actors working with locally embedded, under-resourced partners.
Keywords development, disability, inclusion, safeguarding, partnership, participation.
Safeguarding acts to prevent people from experiencing abuse, neglect, and harm (BOND n.d.). Disability-inclusive safeguarding concerns the design, implementation, and strengthening of safeguarding systems to involve all people, including people with disabilities (Able Child Africa and Save the Children 2021; IDDC 2023). In the international development sector, safeguarding is a shared responsibility of all actors, including donors, international non-governmental organisations (INGOs), and researchers, as well as country partners, including civil society groups, governments, and Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs), and the participants themselves.
Mobile educator with Ganga and her father in Nepal
Photo credit Humanity & Inclusion Nepal
Efforts to strengthen safeguarding in the international development sector are set against a backdrop of serious, historical safeguarding failures and a lack of accountability to affected populations (notably, allegations of sexual misconduct and other unacceptable behaviour during Oxfam’s humanitarian response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake (Oxfam 2011)), leading to higher requirements for safeguarding standards from donors and INGOs over the past decade (FCDO 2022a). In parallel, efforts to decolonise development and shift power, decision-making, and funding to local actors have often fallen short of international commitments (Metcalfe-Hough et al. 2022; LaLonde et al. 2025). In 2027, Overseas Development Assistance is projected to fall back to 2020 levels, impacting the poorest countries and hitting vital services the hardest (OECD 2025), which may have a negative impact on safeguarding efforts.
In general, people with disabilities are more likely than their non‑disabled peers to both experience abuse and report it and are also less likely to be in systems of support or protection (UN News 2012; Able Child Africa and Save the Children 2021; IDDC 2023). This is compounded by the extensive barriers that prevent people with disabilities from accessing justice, such as paternalistic or negative attitudes questioning their ability to participate in all phases of the administration of justice, despite their rights being enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (UN 2020, 2006).
OPDs advocate for the rights of people with disabilities, such as non-discrimination, accessibility, and full participation (Young, Reeve and Grills 2016). In this role, OPDs are often the first point of contact for people with disabilities and their families, especially in times of crisis, and work to identify measures for redress. This means that OPDs, as member-based organisations led, directed, and governed by people with disabilities, are acutely aware of the risks experienced by their members in the communities where they live, and barriers to accessing services and facilities. In effect, OPDs have historically done work on safeguarding, but often without formal policies and procedures in place.
At the same time, OPDs are historically under-resourced, and one impact of this is limited organisational and human capacity to meet high donor and INGO safeguarding requirements (International Disability Alliance 2022). In turn, this can become a barrier to funding, perpetuating under-resourcing and limiting opportunities to create a culture of safeguarding.
Proportionality, defined as ‘the least intrusive response appropriate to the risk presented’ (IDDC 2020: 8), is often invoked as a solution when it comes to OPDs and safeguarding requirements. Proportionality with OPD partnerships is usually construed as lighter compliance: fewer mandatory trainings, shorter reports, and reduced paperwork. However, ‘doing less’ does not address the persistent need to strengthen OPD safeguarding capacity and address the heightened risk of harm for people with disabilities (including exclusion from core services), and it does not capitalise on the opportunity for OPDs to make safeguarding proactive, sustained, and relevant in local communities.
To change the current situation and deliver contextually relevant and effective safeguarding, INGOs should practise solidarity with OPDs.8 Johnson and Carroll (2022: 62) state that crossmovement solidarity ‘often means solidarity with marginalised experiences that we have not lived and being open to learning about experiences that are unfamiliar to us’. Central features of solidarity are recognising interdependence across difference, mutual aid, and sharing and receiving feedback (Johnson and Carroll 2022). Partnership can be a powerful tool to challenge hierarchies and the status quo in international development. Partnerships that are collaborative, learning focused, and mutually beneficial have the potential to produce effective and sustainable outcomes (LaLonde et al. 2025). From 2018 to 2026, a consortium of INGOs, OPDs, and research institutes collaborated to implement the Disability Inclusive Development Inclusive Futures (hereafter Inclusive Futures) programme which aimed to improve outcomes for people with disabilities in health, education, and livelihoods, and address stigma and discrimination across Bangladesh, Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda. The Inclusive Futures programme had a central mandate to learn and evidence how to work with OPDs to deliver disabilityinclusive programming. It published a guide to building successful partnerships between INGOs and OPDs (Inclusive Futures 2023), worked with over 200 OPDs, and channelled 10 per cent of its total programme funding (FCDO 2025) to downstream OPDs.9
This article presents programme learning from Inclusive Future’s safeguarding work. It reflects on how INGO and OPD partnership on safeguarding provides practical examples of solidarity and illustrates challenges, indicating opportunities for INGOs to strengthen their practice of solidarity with OPDs in future programming.
This article draws on findings from qualitative, formative research conducted for the Inclusive Futures programme, which are detailed in a learning brief entitled Practical Pathways for Disability Inclusive Safeguarding (Inclusive Futures 2025). The learning brief’s findings were informed by a desk review of documents from the Inclusive Futures programme, which included quarterly reports, safeguarding logs, and programme strategy documents, an external literature review on disability-inclusive safeguarding, and eight key informant interviews (KIIs) from Inclusive Futures OPD, INGO, and NGO partners. The interviews were conducted online, individually or in pairs, using semi-openended questions in November 2023.
This article expands on the findings of the learning brief and the KIIs, offering analysis of INGO solidarity with OPDs within the Inclusive Futures programme.
The Inclusive Futures programme was delivered through ten global partners and more than 200 OPDs. During in-country participatory workshops at the beginning of the programme, OPDs influenced programme understanding and approach, emphasising that disability-inclusive safeguarding must go beyond compliance and reporting to deliver equal participation and collaboration for people with disabilities, building trust in the community, and accessibility at every stage. In the KIIs, one OPD member stated:
There is a motto of nothing about us without us. So, while we are talking about disability-inclusive safeguarding, it means that there must be representation from people with disabilities in all the processes of safeguarding. That means risk assessment or developing mitigation procedures [and] reporting procedures.
(November 2023, online)
The Inclusive Futures programme learning brief on disability-inclusive safeguarding states that meaningful participation with OPDs started by getting to know their existing knowledge and practice in safeguarding, and their own safeguarding priorities, before tailoring training (Inclusive Futures 2025). Like any organisation, OPD members can perpetrate harm, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and Inclusive Futures OPD partners understood the critical need to develop and maintain strong internal safeguarding systems. In accordance with FCDO (2022b) guidance on due diligence, as a minimum across the consortium, all partners, including OPDs, needed to agree to a shared Code of Conduct.10 This was particularly critical for OPDs who did not have clear safeguarding policies at the beginning of the programme.
Capacity strengthening for OPDs on safeguarding was recognised as both important for the programme’s expected standards and a benefit for OPDs. One of the global partners – ADD International – ran self-assessments with OPDs to map the safeguarding and organisational capacity of each one. During this process, ADD International emphasised proportionality, with consideration of the time, skills, and human resources a self-assessment requires from small, voluntary OPDs. OPDs received support to strengthen areas where there were gaps in safeguarding or other areas they prioritise, such as policies on gender equality or financial management.
The Global Safeguarding Network of the Inclusive Futures programme, an online collective of consortium members, also shared resources and facilitated open discussions on safeguarding issues and practices. As an example of solidarity through peer support, OPDs were included in sharing lessons learned through research, webinars, and conferences. However, during KIIs, time and resourcing were consistently identified as factors limiting meaningful engagement by OPDs, as exemplified by one INGO member:
I think this is an overall challenge for this consortium. We are talking about representation and active participation in every aspect of the project. But the time we require from them [OPD representatives] is really high compared to the time compensation we are providing for them at this stage.
(November 2023, online)
The learning brief highlights that the formation of INGO and OPD partnerships and capacity-strengthening activities needed to be done critically, to not inadvertently recreate broader social dynamics, such as gender and power imbalances (Inclusive Futures 2025). For example, Inclusive Futures partners identified that inviting senior representatives from OPDs to meetings or trainings may make them male dominated because there is a lack of female senior representatives in OPDs. Thus, well‑intentioned invitations that do not consider gender identity may recreate power imbalances, which could potentially result in situations that are not conducive to ensuring that abuse, neglect, and harm are avoided. With this awareness, the programme ran gender inclusion training with OPDs, actively sought out partnerships with women-led and women-focused OPDs, and invested time to understand the structures and dynamics of each organisation that was partnered with. Forging capacity‑strengthening partnerships between INGOs and OPDs needs to be done with an intersectional lens.
The learning brief emphasises the importance of OPDs taking a clear role in working with people with disabilities to identify risk and establish mitigation strategies, contributing to a comprehensive project risk assessment and supporting the safe participation of project participants with disabilities (Inclusive Futures 2025). INGOs, NGOs, and OPDs completed project risk assessments by facilitating conversations with people with disabilities to understand what makes them feel safe and unsafe. Project risk assessments informed activity implementation and were revisited throughout the project to check if the risks have changed and the mitigations need to be adjusted. To be effective, OPDs and people with disabilities need to be included in this process throughout the project cycle.
KIIs emphasised how OPDs were motivated to learn and apply safeguarding, demonstrating that OPDs recognised the potential that safeguarding has to support their work as advocates for the rights of people with disabilities. For example, in Bangladesh, many women and adolescent girls with disabilities raised how they can feel unsafe on public transport due to the risks of bullying and verbal abuse from peers and neighbours, and the risk of physical or sexual abuse when travelling unaccompanied. This prompted conversations on mitigations including identifying safe and accessible routes between home and the project locations, providing route orientation and practice, organising group travel, identifying and engaging with local figures such as tea stall owners and shopkeepers who can look out for the person with a disability when they are travelling past, as well as providing financial support for private or safer forms of transport. Many of these local mitigations did not require additional budget or staff and can be considered examples of a safeguarding approach sustained after a programme closes. In some one-off cases, OPDs even took on the role of accompaniment, such as with a child and their caregiver for a single journey to a disability assessment centre in an unfamiliar location, as a form of risk mitigation and support.
Analysis of the data from both the KIIs and the learning brief (Inclusive Futures 2025) confirm how OPDs were an essential part of awareness raising about disability inclusion, safeguarding, and reporting, helping to generate trust and relevancy in the local community during the Inclusive Futures programme. Their presence in the community, and their involvement in campaigns and house visits, was significant, as displayed by one representative of a local partner organisation:
[OPDs] help raise awareness among families, especially caregivers, and close neighbouring members about how to keep children safe. They explain why safeguarding is important, why a Code of Conduct is important, and what respectful and protective behaviour should look like when working with children, especially those with disabilities. They also help people understand the different types of abuse that can happen during home-based education or while providing any kind of support – such as neglect, emotional abuse, or even physical or sexual harm, so that these risks can be prevented and addressed early.
(November 2023, online)
The learning brief details a case study from Nepal, where OPDs were included in a group of local actors, composed of teachers, community-based project officers, and local authority leaders, receiving disability-inclusive safeguarding training (Inclusive Futures 2025). Training was made relevant to the context, such as focusing on simple language of ‘good touch’ and ‘bad touch’ and reinforcing the message that safeguarding was everyone’s responsibility. Including OPDs allowed them the opportunity to network with other local actors and build connections outside of their partnership with the INGO.
OPDs were also directly involved in designing a range of relevant reporting mechanisms. The learning brief includes the example of reporting mechanisms in Kenya, including a toll-free phone number, an email inbox, a physical complaints box, trained team members, and a nominated ‘focal point’ defined as a consortium partner acting as a main point of contact and coordination during any safeguarding cases (ibid.). One challenge noted was designing reporting mechanisms to work for people with complex disabilities and the length of time required to build their trust and understanding in reporting. Teams had success trialling symbols and colours to express emotions, as a non-verbal form of reporting, and partnering with OPDs representing people with complex disabilities to address the challenge. As one OPD member stated during a KII,
Inclusive safeguarding is also about building trust with the persons with disabilities, because if planning systems and procedures are not accessible then they tend to be always excluded from knowing about it, and getting into the system, raise complaints, as well as what types of things we can complain about, and what those things should address.
(November 2023, online)
If safeguarding systems are established as part of a major international development programme, safeguarding reports should be expected. Receiving no reports at all could indicate the existence of a barrier to reporting. This should be a cause for concern, not an indication of success (Inclusive Futures 2025). In the KIIs, one NGO member reported:
The family members often do not consider it a risk to be abused. Also, we have not had a sexual abuse case to date. So I wonder, what could be the reason?... They think that if they raise this concern, it could be shameful for them. That people may disrespect them, but we still have opportunities to work here more to make them understand that this is not your fault.
(November 2023, online)
Local NGOs and OPDs shared insight that shame and stigma about sexual abuse may be a possible barrier to formal reporting. This local knowledge allowed the project to complete targeted community work that addressed these specific barriers effectively. In different contexts, different barriers may exist, which highlights the importance of working in partnership with local NGOs and OPDs.
The Inclusive Futures programme used the UK Charity Commission’s criteria – of harm, abuse, or neglect relating to the conduct of project staff or activities – to determine if a safeguarding concern was serious and should be reported and investigated (Charity Commission 2025). If a safeguarding concern fell outside of this definition initially, the Inclusive Futures programme did not require partners to report or investigate it. However, as the learning brief notes, many INGO and OPD partners acted on their duty of care and responded to serious safeguarding cases in the community that were not related to the conduct of project staff or activities (Inclusive Futures 2025). The Inclusive Futures programme termed these cases a ‘community concern’. One OPD member discussed this during a KII:
When you begin that discussion [about safeguarding] and especially at that county level, there are a lot of experiences and stories around the kind of incidents that persons face, especially women and girls with disabilities. This is where they first come out and then we’re able to hear how such cases should be dealt with – issues around referral and reporting them. They are often not reported or treated with the seriousness that they need. Even for things that aren’t programme related or project related, we still have an OPD reaching out to us to support them. That is because of the lack of existence of proper referral structures. And these are cases that don’t even involve programme participants.
(November 2023, online)
The Inclusive Futures programme adapted to respond to community cases by including a community concern reporting and response option in the programme safeguarding practice. For example, if a project partner identified a community concern case, they could decide on the response, ranging from providing case management support to a stakeholder, to sharing their inclusive referral mapping or using project budget for survivor support (Inclusive Futures 2025). Local networks, including OPDs, became invaluable in responding to community cases. If a partner decided to respond to a community concern, they reported it in their project safeguarding log and submitted it to the Inclusive Futures programme Global Safeguarding Advisor. If needed, the Global Safeguarding Advisor provided technical support, and the programme allowed project partners the flexibility to allocate resources to their community concern cases. The programme’s implementation experience regarding community concerns highlights the difference between safeguarding just for compliance and safeguarding for solidarity.
During the Inclusive Futures programme, OPDs took a crucial role in finding inclusive referral services. The learning brief details how referral mapping needed to be proactive, completed at the beginning of a project before implementation started, and continuously updated as services open, evolve, or close (Inclusive Futures 2025). A country context map of legal frameworks and protection systems and services provided a foundation for local referral service mapping. The programme relied heavily on local and national knowledge and connections to complete the mapping.
To determine suitability, many local referral services needed to be visited in person, or at a minimum vetted through phone conversations.11 For example, one project in Nepal found that of the 23 services mapped in the Chitwan and Makwanpur districts, only six were considered reasonably accessible, while in Kenya, partners found that some referral services, such as for women to report cases of gender-based violence to police in Kenya, had not included accessibility considerations for how women with disabilities could report. For example, sign language interpreters were not provided, which could present a barrier should a deaf woman need to report.
The learning brief highlights the difficulties of securing a successful referral, and the impact this had on OPD members and INGO safeguarding focal points, who monitored safeguarding cases, staying in contact with the survivor until they accessed and completed the support secured for them (ibid.) There were instances where there was a strong duty of care to provide a survivor with psychosocial support, and there was no public, accessible services available, so the programme covered the cost of private counselling for survivors.
The programme did not include the disability inclusion strengthening of referral systems used in safeguarding, such as the police or social services, in its design. Being directly connected with referral services could support OPDs to sustain safeguarding in the community. One OPD member stated:
I think one of the things that has really come out is as a programme, or rather as organisations within the programme, keep doing [sic] is looking at how do we connect OPD or other connecting OPD [sic] to referral pathways within the communities. We need to keep supporting them to identify them and go beyond our programmes to build that capacity around reporting, especially GBV [gender-based violence].
(November 2023, online)
OPDs are particularly well placed to take on a more direct connection with referral systems, as they are representative bodies of people with disabilities that have knowledge of national disability laws, advocacy experience, and local connections. The programme could be seen to have missed an opportunity to draw out and integrate this expertise into project design.
Historical under-resourcing of OPDs means that their staff do not have access to the same organisational benefits and services as INGO staff. This disparity was clear in one example from the learning brief, in cases of psychosocial support for OPD and INGO staff involving protracted and complex safeguarding and community concern cases (Inclusive Futures 2025). Several INGO staff accessed organisational psychosocial services whereas OPD staff did not have access to organisational services. This left OPD staff ultimately unsupported.
The Inclusive Futures programme worked with over 200 downstream OPD partners, who received 10 per cent of the total programme budget. However, due to UK aid contract requirements, the INGO partners were accountable for safeguarding and managed the safeguarding budgets.12 The majority of the OPDs in the Inclusive Futures programme were not directly involved in the case management and investigation of serious safeguarding cases, as defined by the Charity Commission (2025). As one OPD member commented in a KII,
For us [OPD members] to do all these things the way they are supposed to be done, we need the budget and the capacity. [...] We are not paid to do this role, but we do it because it is another role and it’s very, very important. But it takes our time. It is a lot of time and you have to do [sic] like a full-time job. So, when I talk about capacity, I mean two things in terms of skills that are needed to implement the safeguarding inclusive practices, and manpower. I know in big organisations we have people who are dedicated to do the safeguarding work.
(November 2023, online)
OPDs gaining experience in specific areas such as case management and investigation would serve to enhance and sustain community safeguarding and equip them with the skills and experience to meet heightened donor and INGO safeguarding requirements. In turn, this would support future equitable funding applications, where OPDs have responsibility over safeguarding design, delivery, and budgeting, rather than merely having their costs reimbursed. Failing to implement these changes keeps OPDs permanently ‘downstream’, maintaining an imbalance of power in INGO–OPD partnerships where the INGO partner ultimately retains power – in budgets and decision‑making.
4 Conclusion
As a global consortium of ten partners working across six countries, the Inclusive Futures programme aimed to create a comprehensive, disability-inclusive safeguarding approach. It recognised that OPDs are uniquely positioned to work on safeguarding in international development programmes due to their mandate under the UNCRPD as member‑based organisations representing and advocating for non‑discrimination, accessibility, and full participation of people with disabilities.
Programme learning and KIIs on safeguarding demonstrate that under the Inclusive Futures programme, INGOs and OPDs successfully partnered to design and implement disabilityinclusive safeguarding. It also demonstrated practical examples of solidarity by INGOs towards OPDs. This included capacity strengthening, peer support and resource sharing through the Global Safeguarding Network, facilitation of meaningful participation throughout the project cycle, agreeing a clear role in activities that recognised their position in local communities, and changing practice in response to feedback. The learning suggests that OPDs held an important role in disability-inclusive safeguarding, especially at the local level, and were crucial to the programme’s delivery of a contextually relevant and effective disability-inclusive safeguarding system.
A strong example of solidarity is how the programme responded to feedback on community concern cases, ultimately including them in its safeguarding practice. The programme demonstrated a collaborative, learning-focused, and mutually beneficial partnership model when it devolved decision-making to the project partners on community concern cases and provided flexibility to reallocate technical and financial resources. Future programming should consider integrating community concerns into its standard safeguarding practice from design. To push further, community concern cases may be an opportunity for OPDs to take on more direct connection with referral systems and gain critical safeguarding skills.
The findings also illustrate challenges when it comes to INGOs practising solidarity with the disability movement. Ultimately, INGO partners were accountable for donor safeguarding requirements and controlled safeguarding budgets; this contributed to missed opportunities to strengthen OPD capacity in critical safeguarding skill sets – such as case management and investigation. To practise solidarity, INGOs must challenge the status quo of international development. OPD capacity strengthening activities should go beyond support to meet donor requirements, such as the adoption of a Code of Conduct, and target the skills and experience needed to secure future funding and address historical under-resourcing, as well as to effectively uphold the safeguarding system that they contributed to building.
While the example of including OPDs in inclusive referral mapping demonstrates how OPDs took a role in building contextually relevant safeguarding systems, the programme’s decision not to include system strengthening of referral services in its design highlights a limit of INGO solidarity. INGOs working with OPDs, and local police and health services, to address stigma and discrimination so they could better serve people with disabilities who experience harm, abuse, or neglect would push the boundaries of standard international development safeguarding programming. However, it would demonstrate solidarity with the mandate of OPDs to advocate for the non-discrimination and full participation of people with disabilities.
Finally, the example of how OPD and INGO workers had different access to psychosocial support underscores the need for INGOs to consider acts of mutual aid as a demonstration of solidarity with OPDs. In future programming, there is an opportunity for INGOs to think beyond programme delivery priorities and include mental health support for OPD workers. They are on the frontline of safeguarding work and need to be protected from burnout so that they can continue to contribute to the disability movement.
The commitment of the Inclusive Futures programme to learning and evidence of how it worked to deliver disability-inclusive safeguarding provides INGOs in the international development sector with the opportunity to improve their solidarity with OPDs in future programming. OPDs need funding, equitable partnerships, capacity strengthening, and contextually relevant activities targeting stigma and discrimination to establish a sustainable safeguarding culture. In future programming, INGOs must go beyond compliance when it comes to safeguarding and invest in approaches to strengthen local reporting and response systems. In doing so, the hope is that the strongest legacy of the Inclusive Futures programme is not temporary compliance but the support of the development of a safeguarding culture with OPDs that will pervade their future programming.
1 This issue of the IDS Bulletin was supported by UK aid under its flagship Disability Inclusive Development (DID) programme. The DID programme was delivered through two separate programmes. The eight-year consortium intervention, Disability Inclusive Development Inclusive Futures (Inclusive Futures) programme, led by Sightsavers and the International Disability Alliance, ran from August 2018 to March 2026. It has reached more than 19 million people and generated almost 300 learning and evidence resources to inform policy and practice on disability-inclusive development. The evaluation programme, the Programme for Evidence to Inform Disability Action (PENDA), was delivered by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. The opinions expressed are the authors’ own and do not reflect the views of the funders.
2 The authors warmly acknowledge and thank the members of the Disability Inclusive Development Inclusive Futures programme’s Global Safeguarding Network and OPD partners who participated in the creation of a learning brief titled: Practical Pathways for Disability Inclusive Safeguarding (Inclusive Futures 2025), which informs this article.
3 For further resources, including a training toolkit, see Inclusive Futures (n.d.).
4 Lisa Morris, independent learning consultant, UK.
5 Claire Walsh, Deputy Programme Director, Disability Inclusive Development, Sightsavers, Canada.
6 Amba Salelkar, Senior Manager for Programs and Impact, International Disability Alliance, India.
7 Jo Dempster, independent safeguarding consultant, UK.
8 For further detail on solidarity across the disability movement see Johnson and Carroll (2022), and Amery and Yeo (2024).
9 For the purposes of calculating this figure, downstream partners are defined as organisations outside the Inclusive Futures consortium partners. The International Disability Alliance is not included in the calculation as they are a consortium partner and not a downstream partner.
10 See RSH (2021) for a template of an inclusive Code of Conduct that can be used by OPDs.
11 For further guidance see Able Child Africa and Save the Children (2021). This provides examples of referral mapping, which needs to include statutory, non-statutory, and community-based systems and support. It emphasises taking a proportionate approach, gradually updating or completing referral mapping.
12 The International Disability Alliance had a safeguarding budget and managed safeguarding cases, but over 90 per cent of the safeguarding cases reported during the programme’s duration came from projects where INGOs were accountable for safeguarding and managed the safeguarding budget.
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© 2026 The Authors. IDS Bulletin © Institute of Development Studies | DOI: 10.19088/1968-2026.158 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited and any modifications or adaptations are indicated.
The IDS Bulletin is published by Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Brighton, BN1 9RE, UK. This article is part of IDS Bulletin Vol. 57 No. 1 March 2026 ‘Building Disability-Inclusive Futures’; the Introduction is also recommended reading.