Executive Summary

Smiling boys stand outside, with the makeshift shelters of Kutupalong refugee camp in the background.

Image description

Smiling boys stand outside, with the makeshift shelters of Kutupalong refugee camp in the background.

End of image description

Disability inclusion is crucial to effective humanitarian action. Since the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), disability has been firmly established as a human rights issue and key donors make it a prerequisite for funding. Many humanitarian organizations have also committed themselves to including persons with disabilities in their work in line with the core humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence (for example, by signing the Charter on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action). In daily practice, however, the protection of the rights of persons with disabilities is still lagging behind.

In Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, more than 870,000 refugees have found shelter after fleeing from Myanmar. While all of them live in dire conditions, persons with disabilities face even more severe barriers in accessing humanitarian services and participating in the humanitarian response. To ensure the inclusion and protection of persons with disabilities, humanitarian actors have been increasingly reaching out to disability-focused organizations for technical support and capacity-building. Some organizations have also entered into strategic partnerships or formed consortia projects with disability-focused organizations to systematically build up their capacities on inclusion. Three disability-focused organizations (Humanity & Inclusion (HI), Christian Blind Mission (CBM) and the Centre for Disability in Development (CDD)) and HelpAge International established the Age and Disability Working Group (ADWG) to promote the inclusion of older persons and persons with disabilities within the wider humanitarian response by providing technical support to the coordination mechanism (clusters). Despite these efforts, the inclusion of persons with disabilities remains an ongoing challenge.

Research in Cox’s Bazar demonstrates that many organizations have only just started to build their capacity and thus lack expertise on how to ensure the inclusion of persons with disabilities throughout their programmes. Despite some level of commitment from numerous humanitarian actors, as evidenced though their signing of the Charter on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action, a systematic approach to ensuring the inclusion of persons with disabilities in their organizations, programmes and services is still lacking. In fact, the inclusion of persons with disabilities most often depends on the initiatives and motivations of a few individuals within the organizations. Moreover, there are still insufficient financial resources allocated to inclusive humanitarian action. This is a problem in Cox’s Bazar, where humanitarian actors require considerable resources to address past failures in the planning and construction of the camp’s infrastructure. To make services accessible for everyone, roads, facilities and shelters must be remodelled. Yet short funding cycles, frequent staff turnover and administrative procedures that entail a high workload for humanitarian staff reduce the time and resources needed to create an inclusive environment and ensure the meaningful participation of persons with disabilities. These issues take away time that could be spent on building the capacity of humanitarian staff.

To ensure the inclusion of persons with disabilities, it is crucial that donors guarantee sustainable and reliable funding. This will allow organizations to focus on capacity-building and make the necessary investments to build an accessible environment. Humanitarian actors should promote the meaningful participation of persons with disabilities, collect, analyse, use and share data disaggregated by age, gender and disability, reduce attitudinal, environmental and institutional barriers, identify good practices and learn from one another’s experiences. Ideally, the Government of Bangladesh and humanitarian actors will facilitate longer-term programming to contribute to the inclusion of persons with disabilities in humanitarian services until a return of the Rohingya to Myanmar becomes possible (see Reliefweb, 2020).

For future humanitarian crises, it is crucial that more attention is directed towards capacity-building at the headquarters level of humanitarian organizations. Disability inclusion is a strategic issue for the whole organization, and headquarters therefore need to promote a policy on age, gender and diversity in all operations. This will enhance equality, foster non-discrimination and ensure the systematic incorporation of persons with disabilities in humanitarian activities at all stages of the humanitarian response (preparedness, response and recovery).