INGOs: Saviours or Stop-Gap Solutions?

Abstract

While the previous two chapters briefly touched upon the effect of INGOs’ interventions with DPOs in Burkina Faso, this chapter now expands on the approaches employed by INGOs—a major influence in disabled people’s everyday lives—in their interventions in the disability domain. In order to develop an understanding of the lived experiences of disabled people and ultimately recognise the importance of engaging with the same experiences so as to rethink development interventions and policies, the first two sections delve into the workings of these organisations as well as the underpinning ideologies. The last section—in attempting to obtain a more holistic picture of development interventions with disabled people—examines another actor in disabled people’s lives: the Burkinabe state’s role in disability and development. It explores the increase in the role of INGOs and how this is further strengthened by the state’s lack of intervention and its rather passive role in disabled people’s development.