Table of Contents
1. 2024 – Brazilian G20 Presidency and the C20/D20
In 2024, under the Brazilian presidency of the G20, the Autistan Diplomatic Organization (“Autistan”) took part in the Civil 20 (C20) process and in the work that led to the launch of the Disability-20 (D20) initiative.
In the C20 Policy Pack 2024 (see C20 Policy Pack 2024 – PDF), the term “autistic people” does not appear by accident or only once. It is mentioned several times and appears in almost all of the thematic chapters where it is relevant to speak about inclusion, rights, education, employment, health, digitalisation, and related issues. In other words, autism was integrated in a cross-cutting way into the Policy Pack, instead of being relegated to a marginal note.
This result is directly linked to Autistan’s work:
- Written contributions that explicitly proposed mentioning autistic people, with concrete formulations that could be inserted in the text.
- Repeated oral interventions during C20 working group meetings to insist that autistic people must be clearly named and not diluted in vague disability categories.
- Internal documentation, written records and video recordings of these meetings, which show that Autistan consistently brought this topic, and that we were the only actor working specifically and systematically on this point.
In parallel, Autistan also contributed to the launch of the Disability-20 (D20) initiative during the Brazilian G20 presidency, coordinated by Instituto Jô Clemente (IJC) (see G20 – Disability-20 overview). Our logo appears on the D20 launch documents, and we participated in preparatory work, including activities in Rio de Janeiro, in order to ensure that autism would be understood as a specific reality requiring adapted public policies.
To summarise the 2024 part: the repeated, cross-cutting presence of the words “autistic people” in the C20 Policy Pack is the direct result of Autistan’s interventions and contributions.
2. Moving into 2025 – Intention to Continue in South Africa
After this 2024 experience, it was logical and necessary for Autistan to try to continue this work under the South African G20 presidency in 2025:
- to follow the C20 process in South Africa (see C20 South Africa website),
- to stay engaged with the D20 process under South African leadership (see again G20 – Disability-20 overview),
- and to prevent the mention of autistic people from disappearing again from G20-related documents.
Autistan therefore registered as a participating organisation in the C20 South Africa 2025 process and received several e-mails at the beginning of the year. One of these messages explained that the C20 governance was blocked and that the different actors had not yet reached an agreement on how to proceed. After that point, the situation became unclear.
3. 2025 – Repeated Attempts to Engage, and No Replies
In this context of confusion, Autistan acted in a methodical and responsible way throughout 2025. We wrote several times, using the official channels indicated, in order to obtain basic information about the C20 and D20 processes.
We contacted:
- non-governmental organisations presented as being involved in or responsible for the C20 process,
- structures associated with the C20 or the D20,
- and several South African governmental entities linked to the G20 and C20.
The questions were simple and constructive:
- Has the C20 process in South Africa effectively resumed after the initial blockage?
- Who is in charge of the C20 coordination?
- How can an already-registered organisation effectively participate (working groups, written inputs, meetings)?
- What is the calendar and what are the key deadlines?
The result was very clear: we never received any reply. Not even an acknowledgement of receipt, not a partial explanation, not a redirection to another contact. Nothing.
In practice, this means that:
- Autistan was officially present in the C20 registration lists,
- but we were left without any answer despite several written attempts to obtain basic information.
For an autistic-led organisation, which depends on clear, reliable and formal channels of communication, this complete non-response is not a minor inconvenience; it is a concrete form of exclusion.
4. End of 2025 – Discovering the South African C20/D20 Work Afterwards
Only towards the end of 2025 did we finally see, through public information, that:
- the C20 South Africa had in fact been operating, with working groups and an Initial Policy Draft (see article on the Initial Policy Draft),
- and that the C20 had presented a Political Declaration and Communiqué to the G20 leaders in November 2025 (see SA News report on the C20 Political Declaration and South African government media advisory).
- the D20 process had also taken place in South Africa, with a Global Disability-20 Declaration (see Disability-20 Global Declaration – PDF) and a South African G20 Disability Inclusion Call to Action (see 2025 Disability-20 Call to Action – PDF).
In other words, while Autistan was still trying to understand whether the process was blocked or not, the C20 and the D20 processes had been resumed and developed without us, and without any response to our attempts to participate.
When we looked at the publicly available documents from these South African C20 and D20 processes, we were not able to identify any explicit mention of autism or autistic people in the texts. The language remains framed in terms of “disability” and “inclusion” in general, without any clear reference to autistic people as such.
This is exactly what one could expect: in 2024, when Autistan actively participates, autistic people are named in the C20 Policy Pack. In 2025, when Autistan is registered but receives no answer and cannot effectively take part, autism disappears again from the official language.
5. Accessibility and Structural Issues Observed
From an accessibility and rights-based perspective, what happened in 2025 is not simply an unfortunate misunderstanding. It highlights several structural issues:
- Total non-response to an autistic organisation’s messages Autistan is an autistic-led organisation which had already contributed to the C20 and D20 processes in 2024. It contacted several relevant actors in 2025 and received no reply at all. This is a clear attitudinal and organisational barrier.
- Failure of official communication channels If the official e-mail addresses and contact points do not function in practice, only organisations with access to informal networks and personal connections can participate effectively. This strongly disadvantages autistic organisations that rely on formal and explicit procedures.
- Contradiction with inclusion and disability rhetoric It is difficult to speak credibly about “disability inclusion” when an autistic-led organisation that was already engaged in the previous year: writes several times, receives no answer, and discovers only afterwards that the process has taken place without it and without any mention of autistic people.
6. Provisional Conclusion for 2024–2025
Looking at 2024 and 2025 together, the situation can be summarised as follows:
- Brazil 2024 Autistan participates in the C20 working groups and in the launch of the D20 initiative. The expression “autistic people” appears multiple times in the C20 Policy Pack 2024 (see C20 Policy Pack 2024 – PDF), in almost all relevant chapters. It is easy to link this result to Autistan’s written and oral contributions.
- South Africa 2025 Autistan is registered in the C20 lists and initially informed that the C20 governance is blocked. We then send several messages during the year, using the official channels, but receive no reply. Only at the end of 2025 do we see that C20 and D20 have in fact produced outputs, yet without any explicit mention of autism in the publicly available documents.
This contrast shows that:
- autism does not appear spontaneously in G20, C20 or D20 agendas; it needs to be brought and maintained there by dedicated autistic-led actors;
- the role of an extra-national, autistic-led structure such as the Autistan Diplomatic Organization is therefore structural, not symbolic;
- and the accessibility of the participation mechanisms themselves (including the obligation to respond to autistic organisations and to provide clear information) is a key condition for ensuring that autistic people do not remain invisible in global policy discussions.
Autistan will continue its work in the G20/C20/D20 space by:
- documenting concrete cases of non-accessibility, such as the 2025 experience described here,
- explaining how non-functional official channels effectively exclude autistic organisations,
- advocating for the explicit naming of autistic people in international texts,
- and proposing practical measures to make participation mechanisms themselves accessible for autistic people.