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Online Conference: Caring Societies for All

March 19 @ 10:00 am - 3:30 pm UTC+1

World Social Work Day 2025

Caring Societies for All: Advancing Social Rights for Persons with Disabilities

📅 Wednesday, 19 March 2025
🕓 10:00–15:30 CET
📍 Online ConferenceWorld Social Work Day 2025 aims to make a contribution to the Second World Summit for Social Development exploring pathways to expand social rights for persons living with disabilities and to create a caring society. Globally, an estimated 1.3 billion people experience disabilities (WHO 2023), a situation that is further exacerbated for people exposed to multiple marginalizations based on class, gender and sexual orientation, age, race, ethnicity or religion, migrant or employment status or location.

This year's edition is convened with three objectives:

  • Raise awareness on the rights of persons with disabilities and the role social workers play in supporting them and their families, creating more inclusive and caring societies;
  • Identify current challenges faced by people with disabilities and caregivers at local and global levels, and ways to address them;
  • Contribute to a call for action for policy actors gathering at the WSSD in Qatar on how to create inclusive care systems and ensure that persons with disabilities can develop their full potential and receive the support they need.

The celebration of WSWD 2025 will feature contributions from social workers and scholars from diverse regions across the world. Through keynote speeches, interactive discussions, and a policy roundtable, participants will explore pathways toward more just and sustainable shared futures. Discussions will also focus on how social work can collaborate with the United Nations to advance the rights of persons living with disabilities and contribute to the development of comprehensive care systems.
Register here
● Programme Highlights

KEYNOTES

Unlocking Caring Societies via Purple Economy

Shanti Raghavan
Founder EnAble India, Ashoka Fellow, Schwab Social Innovator

How to support a caring society and inclusion of persons with disabilities?
Lessons from the Global South

Mónica Pinilla-Roncancio
Assistant Professor Universidad de los Andes, Associate Researcher Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and Centre for Inclusive Policy

PARTICIPATORY ACTIVITIES

Karima Cherif 
Head of Communications and Outreach, UNRISD

ROUNDTABLE

Towards the Second World Summit for Social Development:
Promoting caring societies and inclusion for persons with disabilities

Facundo Chavez Penillas
Human Rights and Disability Advisor, OHCHR
Wilaiporn (Kae) Kotbungkair
Associate Professor of Social Work, Thammasat University
Pradeep Bagival
Disability Inclusion & Social Protection Specialist, Handicap International
Stefan Tromel
Senior Disability Specialist, ILO

REFLECTIONS

Pierre Margot-Cattin
Professor, School of Social Work Valais (HETS-VS)
Natasha Trotman
Global Research and Action Network for a New Eco-Social Contract (GRAN-ESC)

Access the full programme, the concept note and the abstracts and biographies of speakers here.

Details

Date:
March 19
Time:
10:00 am - 3:30 pm UTC+1
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