In spite of the CRPD, the Humanitarian Disability Charter, and international standards and guidelines, humanitarian actors overlooked the rights and specific requirements of persons with disabilities during the early phase of the crisis in 2017 and 2018, contributing to the marginalization and exclusion of persons with disabilities. Since 2019, this has gradually changed and many humanitarian actors in Cox’s Bazar recognize the importance of mainstreaming disability in their operations. Nonetheless, significant gaps remain in protection and assistance, which result from a lack of comprehensive, reliable and disaggregated data; a lack of participation of persons with disabilities in humanitarian programming; and numerous institutional, attitudinal and environmental barriers. Disability mainstreaming needs to be included in humanitarian activities in the camps from the get-go, otherwise humanitarian actors will always be playing catch-up.
To close these gaps and ensure the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the humanitarian response, United Nations agencies, as well as INGOs and NNGOs, intensified their cooperation with disability-focused NGOs. They entered into partnerships or formed consortia projects to build their organizational capacity on disability-inclusive humanitarian action. Moreover, the ADWG now promotes age and disability inclusion throughout the humanitarian response. Two main factors account for these changes. First, more and more donors demand clear disability-inclusive deliverables from their implementing partners.
Second, the beneficiaries themselves increasingly raise awareness of the concerns of persons with disabilities in their interactions with humanitarian staff.
This study shows that the inclusion of persons with disabilities remains a long-term undertaking. Many organizations have just started building their capacity on disability inclusion. Although there has been some level of commitment from numerous humanitarian actors by signing the Charter on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities, there is still no systematic approach to disability-inclusive humanitarian action. Instead, organizational change still largely depends on the efforts and commitment of a few individuals. Moreover, the local dynamics inhibit the development of holistic, long-term approaches to disability inclusion. Although Cox’s Bazar is a comparatively safe context for humanitarian agencies, short funding cycles, frequent staff rotations, procedures that entail a high administrative workload, and limited information-sharing among organizations and within organizations impede disability-inclusive programming. Furthermore, and due to these challenges, capacity-building and technical support within strategic partnerships and consortia projects with disability-focused NGOs have so far focused on certain sectors and targeted a limited number of humanitarian staff. The international legal documents are relatively new and not well-known among mainstream humanitarian actors, especially at field level. It is therefore hardly surprising that humanitarian organizations lack a systematic approach to ensuring the inclusion of persons with disabilities at the organizational and programming levels. Such a systematic approach should be taken in all activities throughout the humanitarian organizational system.
Compared with ad hoc approaches, systematic and targeted capacity-building as well as technical assistance within strategic partnerships can fundamentally contribute to disability inclusion. Mainstream organizations that maintained a donor-recipient partnership or were part of a consortium project with a disability-focused NGO reported that they had changed their methods of data collection, and now used the WG-SS to inform programming and monitoring. Moreover, they deliberately involved persons with disabilities in their interventions, for example, in cash-for-work programmes and focus group discussions. In addition, they considered ways of reducing environmental barriers and making their services more accessible. Nonetheless, it is important to highlight that disability-inclusive humanitarian action involves more than just addressing accessibility.
It is equally important to promote meaningful participation and empowerment of persons with disabilities, and to remove institutional and attitudinal barriers within the communities and among humanitarian staff.
The main advantage of these partnerships is that mainstream actors can rely on technical support from disability-focused NGOs beyond a single training session. They can build on the expertise of these NGOs for the whole period of the project. Disability-focused NGOs encourage the development of disability-inclusive action plans, oversee the implementation of these plans, review monitoring reports, and support the documentation of case studies and good practice reports.
In addition to these partnerships and consortia, the ADWG, in close cooperation with the Protection Working Group, strives to identify priority protection concerns, create public awareness, cooperate with the Government on mainstreaming issues, participate in information management and data set collection, and in short, ensure that disability issues are mainstreamed across sectors and subsectors. However, it is still too early to evaluate the long-term impact of these mainstreaming efforts.
While multiple factors influence whether humanitarian organizations become disability-inclusive, longer-term programming cycles would enable agencies to more systematically incorporate disability inclusion into programme planning. Other key factors include the absence of OPDs in the Cox’s Bazar district and the prohibition of forming organized groups in the camps, which impede the empowerment of persons with disabilities and their participation in programme activities.66 Although organizations increasingly involve them in community meetings, focus group discussions and projects, and encourage the establishment of loosely connected self-help groups, persons with disabilities do not participate in the humanitarian response in a structured manner. This must change. Humanitarian organizations must enhance their communication and cooperation across their different departments to become more disability-inclusive. This should involve exchanging information, data and experiences in disability-inclusive humanitarian action with other organizations.
Inclusion should not be treated as an add-on. All organizations should integrate it into their day-to-day operations as a strategic issue, so that they are better prepared to deal with new crises.