Derya Yanık, Minister of Family and Social Services, said: "Just as Türkiye has made great strides in the economy, politics, infrastructure investments, and foreign policy, it has also realized a revolution in the challenges faced by the citizens with disabilities."

Minister Derya Yanık attended the first meeting of the Monitoring and Evaluation Board on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2023. Minister Yanık said that the meeting, which was postponed due to the earthquakes centered in Kahramanmaraş on February 6, was held today.

Yanık stated that the earthquake disaster once again showed that social solidarity and inter-institutional cooperation were of vital importance and emphasized that they were aware of the importance of strong coordination and effective cooperation in ensuring that persons with disabilities enjoyed all human rights and freedoms together with others and without any discrimination.

"We have 316 activities to achieve 31 goals in the action plan"

Reminding that the President of the Republic of Türkiye Mr.Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced the 2030 Barrier-Free Vision Document in 2021 and the National Action Plan on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2022, Minister Yanık added, "In the action plan, we have 316 activities to achieve 31 goals set out in 8 policy areas consisting of inclusive and accessible society, protection of rights and justice, health and well-being, inclusive education, economical security, independent living, disaster and humanitarian emergencies, implementation, and monitoring."

Minister Yanık stated that the Ministry took into consideration the differentiated needs of persons with disabilities depending on the diversity and severity of their disabilities, and continued as follows:

"The first method should be to consider the issue of disability with a rights-based approach in the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation processes of these policies, programs, and services, to make evaluations that reveal the effectiveness and efficiency of policies from the perspective of citizens with disabilities, to allocate the necessary budget, and to provide disability-disaggregated data, that is, to mainstream disability so that they can benefit equally as other persons from all our policies, programs, and services while implementing these activities that we plan to carry out between 2023-2025."

 "We will monitor the activities in the action plan with 9 working groups"

Underlining that the Ministry would continue to maintain strong cooperation both in the field of disability in general and to realize the activities in the action plan, Minister Derya Yanık stressed, "In this framework, we will also monitor the realization levels of the activities in the action plan with a total of 9 working groups, including the main working group of the monitoring and evaluation of the rights of persons with disabilities. We have created a web-based monitoring module in order to perform the monitoring systematically. We will all enter information and data on the realization of the activities under the responsibilities of the Ministry into this module."

Stating that monitoring and evaluation reports would be prepared in each policy area every 6 months by working groups with the information and data collected through the module, Yanık continued: "The main report including all policy areas will be completed and published under the coordination of the Ministry. As of today, we are launching this web-based module for data entry."

Stating that the Ministry shaped social policies for the citizens with disabilities based on a rights-based approach, Minister Yanık added: "Just as Türkiye has made great strides in the economy, politics, infrastructure investments, and foreign policy; it has also realized a revolution in the challenges of citizens with disabilities. The reformist spirit that marked the 20 years is most concretely manifested in the regulations for citizens with disabilities."