Key Points
- In South Sudan, the humanitarian context is challenging.
- The government has neither signed nor ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), nor has it taken the action needed to be able to do so in the near future.
- Misconceptions and prejudices against persons with disabilities continue to persist in society and among humanitarian staff.
- Reliable, countrywide data on disability prevalence is not available.
- The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected disability inclusion because it has hampered capacity-building and advocacy efforts at all levels of the response.
- Despite these challenges, the OPDs have further professionalized due to support from inclusion-focused NGOs, which operate under a dual mandate, in both development and humanitarian sectors, and which also work on stabilization, inclusive governance and civil society development. In 2020, eight OPDs founded a national umbrella body, the South Sudan Union of Persons with Disabilities. However, there are only few OPDs outside Juba and many OPDs need to invest further in capacity-building to operate independently from their international partners.
- Misconceptions and prejudices, particularly against persons with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities, are widespread and communication barriers continue to exist. However, organizations have advanced significantly in terms of making their responses more inclusive for persons with disabilities. They:
- involve community leaders and raise their awareness on inclusion
- establish and cooperate with different types of community groups and OPDs to raise awareness on inclusion in society and among humanitarian staff
- partner with inclusion-focused NGOs to build organizational and operational capacity on disability-inclusive humanitarian action at all levels of the response
- set up inclusion focal points to monitor, evaluate and, if necessary, adjust their performance on inclusion
- improve the infrastructure to make their services accessible and offer consultations in multiple formats
- disaggregate data on age, gender and disability
- established a Disability Technical Working Group in cooperation with the health cluster to promote inclusive health services.
- Inclusion-focused organizations support disability inclusion through partnerships with United Nations agencies and mainstream NGOs and in key coordination clusters, notably protection, education, and food security clusters. They:
- give presentations on disability inclusion in cluster meetings to inform and sensitize humanitarian staff on the rights-based understanding of disability and introduce the IASC Guidelines and other relevant documents for inclusive humanitarian action
- organize workshops for cluster leaders to raise awareness on the rights of persons with disabilities and existing tools for disability-inclusive humanitarian action, notably the IASC Guidelines and the Washington Group Short Set of Questions learning tools
- carry out barriers and facilitators assessments
- develop and share documents and guidelines on disability-inclusive humanitarian action, including barriers and facilitators assessments
- offer tailor-made coaching sessions to humanitarian staff at all levels of the response
- involve OPDs in capacity-building as trainers
- recruit persons with disabilities.
- Dual-mandate NGOs, which operate in the development and humanitarian sectors, also encourage the formation of OPDs and help them organize themselves, e.g. by facilitating the establishment of a national umbrella body.
- To further promote disability inclusion, special attention should be given to the following points of action:
- promote the meaningful participation of persons with intellectual and psychosocial impairments
- enhance meaningful participation of persons with disabilities at all stages of the project cycle, particularly in the design and development phase
- invest in their empowerment to enable them to claim their rights
- support the establishment of OPDs outside Juba and investment in their capacity-building
- improve data collection and information sharing on disability at all levels of the response and encourage the use of this data as a basis for inclusive humanitarian programming.