Since the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) entered into force in May 2008, numerous policy tools and guidelines have been produced at the global level to support the inclusion of persons with disabilities in humanitarian action. The most relevant are the Charter on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action (2016), the Humanitarian Inclusion Standards for Older People and People with Disabilities (2018) and the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Guidelines on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Actions (2019).1
At the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, states, United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) reaffirmed their responsibility towards persons with disabilities in humanitarian action and launched the Charter on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action. By 2020, more than 200 actors had signed the Charter and pledged to:
In 2018, the Age and Disability Capacity Programme (ADCAP) developed the Humanitarian Inclusion Standards for Older People and People with Disabilities. These standards seek to strengthen the accountability of humanitarian actors to older people and persons with disabilities and serve as a guide for programming and a resource for training and advocacy. More than 300 stakeholders from organizations of persons with disabilities (OPDs), older people’s associations and humanitarian organizations worldwide provided inputs for the development of these standards, which comprise nine key inclusion standards and seven sets of sector-specific inclusion standards. These are:
Each standard has its own key actions, guidance, tools and resources (Age and Disability Capacity Programme [ADCAP], 2018).
One year later, in 2019, the IASC endorsed the Guidelines on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action. The development of these guidelines was led by the IASC Task Team, which was co-chaired by Humanity & Inclusion (HI), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the International Disability Alliance (IDA). The guidelines reflect the input of more than 600 stakeholders across disability, development and humanitarian sectors and set out essential actions that humanitarian actors must take to identify and respond to the needs and rights of persons with disabilities (Inter-Agency Standing Committee [IASC], 2019).
The development of new donor policies also encourages humanitarian actors to mainstream disability into their work. In 2019, the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO) released a Guidance Note on the inclusion of persons with disabilities in EU-funded humanitarian aid operations (DG ECHO, 2019). Such guidance focuses on mainstreaming disability at the programming level and includes a process indicator to measure the number of beneficiaries disaggregated by gender, age and disability.2 In the same year, the United Nations adopted the Disability Inclusion Strategy, which contains an accountability framework with 15 performance indicators (United Nations, 2019). Other large humanitarian donors, notably the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID)3 and Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), have published similar documents and demand clear deliverables for themselves and their partners to ensure that the humanitarian response efforts become more inclusive (see Department for International Development [DFID], 2018; Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade [DFAT], 2015). In addition, several key international frameworks and documents, such as the Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction (2015) and the Global Compacts on Refugees and Migration (2018) demand that signatories pay particular attention to the needs and specific requirements of persons with disabilities.
However, evidence on how humanitarian actors strive to mainstream disability into their work and what factors support or undermine this process is still scarce.4 To strengthen humanitarian actors’ disability-inclusion capacity, it is vital to have a more profound understanding of the conditions that impede and encourage the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the humanitarian response. This study therefore explores whether and how persons with disabilities are included in the operations of humanitarian actors in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, and whether these operations help improve the situation of persons with disabilities on the ground.