The Arequipa Goals by the numbers

In the first post of this series, we introduced the Arequipa Goals: APEC's 2030 roadmap for strengthening disability education and employment policy across the region, built around three pillars of education, capacity building, and labor and social protection. We left off with a survey circulated to APEC's Human Resources Development Working Group (HRDWG) and Friends of the Chair (FotC) on August 19, 2025, designed to take stock of progress 15 months after adoption. 

The survey drew eighteen responses representing thirteen of APEC's 21 member economies, and notably, 80% of FotC members weighed in. With a strong response rate, the findings below are reasonably representative of the working group. 

Below are key findings and highlights from the survey.

Awareness is high but action lags behind

The clearest finding is also the most encouraging one: more than half of respondents said they were already "very familiar" with the Arequipa Goals, and only a small minority reported little or no exposure.

Fig 1. Arequipa Goals familiarity

But awareness is only the first step. While 78% of respondents said their economy has some form of disability employment policy or program in place, far fewer have explicitly connected that work to the Arequipa Goals. Of the eighteen responses, fourteen said the Goals were at least referenced in policy planning, but only Peru reported using them as a centerpiece of domestic strategy. In other words, the framework exists in most economies, but the direct line connecting existing programs to the framework is missing.

Work within the three pillars

Fig 2. Economy focus areas

Looking across the three pillars, accessible education is clearly the strongest area, with thirteen economies reporting aligned policies or programs. The labor market and social protection trail behind, and vocational training and capacity building lag furthest. This mirrors a pattern seen globally, where education reform can often be driven by a single ministry, while labor market change requires coordination across ministries, employers, and workers. It does, however, point to where APEC's energy should go next: closing the gap between education and employment so that gains in one don't stall out before reaching the other.

Many economies aren't limiting their efforts to the three official pillars. Respondents reported folding disability inclusion into broader priorities: gender gaps, digital access, and service delivery in rural and remote communities. Youth with disabilities emerged as a particularly common area of focus, reflecting a recognition that disability and poverty often compound each other.

Barriers and solutions

Respondents pointed to four recurring obstacles: limited and unstable funding, low societal awareness, competing policy priorities, and insufficient training. The funding issue is particularly structural. In many economies, disability programs depend on donor contributions or short-term project budgets rather than stable, recurring funding, which leaves them vulnerable whenever priorities shift elsewhere.

Fig 3. Barriers to implementation

The flip side of these barriers is that the economies pushing hardest against them are seeing results. Canada's Opportunities Fund has financed eighteen new employment-focused projects projected to deliver a $1.70 social return for every dollar invested. In Peru, disability awareness campaigns have coincided with a 12.5% increase in formal private companies employing persons with disabilities and a 14.4% rise in formal sector employment among that group as of January 2025.

When asked what kind of support from APEC would help most, the top answer was sharing best practices. Economies want to learn from each other's successful approaches rather than building everything from scratch. Increased collaboration and monitoring tools followed close behind, with funding and capacity-building workshops also rated as important.

Takeaways

One year in, awareness is high, education policy is advancing, and economies are voluntarily expanding the scope of their disability work, but the survey also makes clear that recognition hasn't yet become systematic integration. In the final post of this series, we'll look at what APEC and its member economies can do about that.