Publication
Summary of Publication
This report analyses the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on people with disabilities in Indonesia and the extent to which the country’s social protection system and COVID-19 economic response measures have strengthened their ability to cope. It also aims to understand the implications that Indonesia’s COVID-19 response may have in shaping Indonesia’s social protection policies in the long term and how policy lessons from the pandemic can be used to improve the social protection system for people with disabilities.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had severe and lasting impacts on the Indonesian economy. While these economic impacts brought hardships across the population, they are even more profound for the lives of people with disabilities, who often experience multiple layers of vulnerability. In Indonesia, people with disabilities tend to: (i) attain lower education levels; (ii) have less access to the labour market; (iii) incur higher costs of living; and (iv) earn lower income compared to people without disability. Such vulnerabilities are gendered, with women carers and women with disability experiencing greater deprivations compared to their male counterparts.
The report provides some key recommendations prioritised into short-term and medium-term initiatives.