Over the last decade or so there has been increasing engagement by Governments and civil society in the Asian and Pacific region, as well as elsewhere, contributing to the advancement of persons with disabilities and their full inclusion in the societies in which they live. Persons with disabilities and organizations of persons with disabilities have been the drivers of these developments and critical participants in them. These advances have been manifested in the adoption of instruments such as the United Nations Standard Rules for the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities, by initiatives such as the Asian and Pacific Decades of Persons with Disabilities, 1993-2002 and 2003-20012, and the programmatic approach adopted in the Biwako Millennium Framework for Action Towards an Inclusive, Barrier-Free and Rights-Based Society for Persons with Disabilities in Asia and the Pacific in 2002, and its renewal in 2007 in the form of Biwako Plus Five: Further Efforts Towards an Inclusive, Barrier-Free and Rights-Based Society for Persons with Disabilities in Asia and the Pacific.