Before the influx of refugees, only five INGOs and five NNGOs were working with the Government in Cox’s Bazar to support the Rohingya response (ISCG, 2018, p. 69). With the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees in late 2017, the number of NGOs in the district rose sharply. In early 2020, at least 54 INGOs and 61 NNGOs were working in ten humanitarian sectors – health, education, logistics, shelter, WASH, nutrition, site management, emergency telecommunications, food security and protection (with the subsectors child protection and gender-based violence) – as well as in six cross-cutting working groups (OCHA, 2020). All organizations participating in this study had a portfolio of several million USD and employed at least 200 staff. The number of expatriates in the international organizations varied from 5 to 10 per cent.36
From the very beginning of the Rohingya crisis, INGOs and NNGOs assumed a key role in providing humanitarian relief either as partners of United Nations agencies or in stand-alone activities with funding from other key donors.37 To enhance the coordination of their activities, they established the Bangladesh Rohingya Response NGO Platform in June 2018, with the Danish Refugee Council as the host organization. The Platform meets on a monthly basis and brings together over 100 local, national and international organizations.38
Moreover, NNGOs and INGOs increasingly formed consortia to combine and share their expertise, engage in advocacy, or ease heavy administrative processes.
Disability-focused organizations are also involved in consortia projects, which have (so far) been funded by DFID and DFAT. The objectives, number of consortium members, sectors of intervention, geographic coverage, number of beneficiaries, level and length of funding differ from one project to another. Nevertheless, these projects all aim to deliver inclusive humanitarian assistance to the Rohingya refugees (and host communities), while simultaneously mainstreaming disability and strengthening the capacities of the consortium members. One respondent describes the responsibility of its organization in the following way:
Interview 14, representative of an INGO. |
Our role is to coordinate the seven partners and then provide technical support to all of them […]. While we coordinate and provide technical support, our role is facilitative. We facilitate the process. To show them the way and then they drive the vehicles towards achieving that, for protection and inclusion […]. The partners should be able to identify where the problems are, and work towards addressing them, while we provide them with support. |
In concrete terms, this means that disability-focused organizations assist them in inclusion assessments, determine priorities and entry points for inclusion, develop an action plan, provide technical support and build capacities on various aspects through awareness and training sessions; appointment of focal points, who can support ongoing inclusion efforts within these organizations; and reviews of programme tools, including data-collection tools to support disability data collection, analysis and use.39 In one consortium project, mainstream NGOs made sure that newly built WASH facilities were accessible to persons with disabilities. These NGOs identified persons with disabilities before starting the construction work, involved them in the planning phase, and built latrines close to their shelters, ensuring that they were suitable for their needs (for example, big enough to accommodate a support person). Overall, respondents from mainstream NGOs were content with the cooperation and indicated that thanks to the consortia project, their organizations could make their services more inclusive of persons with disabilities. One respondent elaborates:
Interview 21, representative of an NNGO. |
Before we started the consortium project, we thought that our clinic was the best. We have no gaps. But when HI visited our clinic, we realized that we really need to make sure that our clinic is accessible for everyone. |
Nevertheless, several challenges hamper the success of the consortia projects and limit the inclusion of persons with disabilities in humanitarian programming. These challenges pertain to a decline in donor funding, gaps in internal organizational processes and structures (for example, working in silos, insufficient sharing of experience and information among different organizational departments, and limited internal capacity and resources to ensure inclusion) and administrative procedures. This suggests that the inclusion of persons with disabilities requires more than awareness and technical expertise. It also depends on several other factors that may not seem related to disability mainstreaming at first sight. The following section will discuss these challenges in more detail.