MEET THE DISABILITY-20 SECRETARIAT: Melanie Lubbe

Championing Disability Rights Through Lived Experience and Strategic Leadership

Melanie Lubbe is a prominent Disability Rights Advocate, Strategic Leader, and Social Entrepreneur who has dedicated her life to advancing the rights and inclusion of persons with disabilities in South Africa. As a person of short stature, standing 1.17 meters tall, Melanie brings authentic lived experience to her advocacy work, transforming personal challenges into powerful platforms for systemic change.

Currently serving as the Secretariat of the South African Disability Alliance (SADA), Melanie plays a pivotal role in coordinating South Africa’s disability movement and ensuring that the voices of persons with disabilities are amplified in policy-making processes at both national and international levels.

She is also the Founder and President of Equal Citizens of Short Stature – Southern Africa (ECOSS-SA). This groundbreaking non-profit organization provides the first collective representation and advocacy for persons of short stature in South Africa’s history.

Melanie’s leadership extends to the global stage as Secretariat for the Disability-20 South Africa initiative. This critical role positions her as the operational backbone of South Africa’s disability inclusion agenda within the G20 framework. As Secretariat, she is responsible for planning, coordinating, budgeting, and delivering the Disability-20 Parallel Conference, ensuring full accessibility and sector-wide participation. Her work ensures that disability perspectives are integrated into all 15 Sherpa working groups of the G20, making disability inclusion a central part of global economic and social policy development.

Key Achievements and Milestones

Founding Leadership and Organizational Development:

Through ECOSS-SA, Melanie has created vital support structures and pioneered the establishment of South Africa’s first database of persons of short stature. The organization addresses unique challenges, including inaccessible infrastructure and social stigmatization, while combating exploitative practices such as using persons of short stature as “party favours” at events. Under her leadership, ECOSS-SA works to identify different types of dwarfism in the country, providing evidence-based foundations for advocacy and policy development.

Strategic Advocacy and Policy Influence:

As SADA Secretariat, Melanie coordinates advocacy efforts across South Africa’s disability sector, collaborating with government agencies, non-profit organizations, and communities. She has been particularly active in social protection advocacy, raising critical concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic when disability grant processing was suspended. Melanie has contributed to numerous joint statements and policy submissions, advocating for extended social grants, improved accessibility standards, and integration of disability rights into all government policy areas.

Disability-20 Secretariat Leadership:

As Disability-20 Secretariat, Melanie provides the essential organizational infrastructure that makes disability participation in the G20 process possible. She coordinates planning and logistics for all Disability-20 South Africa activities, manages budgets and resource allocation, and ensures full accessibility of all Disability-20 events and materials. Her work includes organizing participatory consultations that engage persons with disabilities in identifying policy gaps across all G20 working groups, ensuring that recommendations are grounded in lived experience and DPO expertise.

Melanie coordinates the development and validation of position papers that inform C20 and G20 policy outputs, working to transform disability inclusion from rhetoric to concrete action. The Disability-20 Parallel Conference planned for October/November 2025 represents the culmination of her coordination efforts, serving as the key platform for consolidating and presenting disability perspectives to the G20.

Understanding the Disability-20 and the Secretariat Role

The Disability-20 initiative ensures active participation of persons with disabilities in the G20, the premier forum for international economic cooperation. Launched in 2024 during Brazil’s G20 presidency, the Disability-20 addresses the historical exclusion of persons with disabilities from global governance platforms. With South Africa assuming the G20 presidency in 2025, the Disability-20 initiative has a unique opportunity to solidify disability inclusion at the centre of international policy development.

The Secretariat role is critical to Disability-20’s success. Melanie’s responsibilities include establishing coordination mechanisms, facilitating communication among diverse stakeholders, supporting the Conference Steering Committee and thematic work streams, and implementing communications strategies to raise awareness of disability rights in the G20 context. Without practical secretariat functions, the ambitious goals of disability inclusion would remain aspirational rather than achievable.

A Vision for Inclusive Development

Melanie’s work is grounded in the belief that persons with disabilities are experts in their own lives and must be central to all decisions affecting them. Her advocacy follows the principle “Nothing About Us Without Us,” ensuring that disability inclusion emerges from authentic voices and experiences rather than being imposed from above.

Through her leadership with SADA and Disability-20, Melanie is building a world where disability is recognized as a natural part of human diversity, requiring systemic change, not individual tragedy, and charity. Her work with the Disability-20 represents a historic opportunity for South Africa to lead globally on inclusive development, ensuring that the voices of 1.3 billion persons with disabilities worldwide are central to shaping global systems and policies.