Transforming livelihoods and education for refugees with disabilities

Why inclusion matters in humanitarian settings

The number of forcibly displaced people has more than doubled over the past decade. It’s estimated that roughly 15-20 per cent of people who are displaced have disabilities.

Refugees with disabilities face multiple and intersecting barriers to accessing humanitarian assistance, education, health care, livelihoods and other services. They are often denied certain legal rights, including the right to a nationality, and are often excluded from decision-making.

How to build inclusive refugee programmes

We’ve developed seven recommendations to improve education and livelihoods for people with disabilities living in refugee contexts.

Intentionally reach adults and children with disabilities in government and humanitarian programmes. Set disability inclusion targets and monitor progress by collecting disability-disaggregated data, involve organisations of people with disabilities (OPDs) in data collection, and allocate specific budgets for reasonable accommodation and accessibility measures.

Take a person-centred approach to address the intersectional barriers faced by refugees with disabilities. Engage directly with individuals with disabilities and their families to understand their needs, provide mobility aids where needed, and strengthen referral systems linking education, health and livelihoods services to provide wraparound support.

Work in partnership with governments and humanitarian agencies in charge of refugee camps and programming. Establish steering committees, promote cross-sectoral collaboration across programmes and optimise limited resources by maximising joint efforts.

Meaningfully engage with organisations of people with disabilities and refugee-led organisations. Engage with refugee-led organisations where formal OPDs do not exist, strengthen the capacity of refugee-led OPDs, and support organisations to advocate locally for improved policies on inclusion.

Offer continuous inclusion training to counter high turnover rates among service providers. Incorporate knowledge, skills and contextual factors affecting uptake into training. Address motivational challenges among service providers to improve service quality.

Work with local governments and humanitarian actors to improve regulatory services. Offer inclusion training for government officials and humanitarian actors, as well as rights-based training for people with disabilities and caregivers. Bring decision-makers and people with disabilities together to discuss solutions to immediate legal and documentation challenges.

Adopt a conflict-sensitive approach to disability inclusion in humanitarian programming. Recognise that promoting disability inclusion involves shifting power dynamics, which may disrupt existing social structures. Recruit diverse staff and engage community leaders to encourage inclusive decision-making.