Disabilities Among Refugees and Conflict-Affected Populations

SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES OF PROJECT
While its primary focus is on improving conditions for refugee
women, children and youth, the Women’s Refugee Commission
(Women’s Refugee Commission) has, in recent years, begun to
address the needs of other excluded and marginalized groups of
refugees and displaced persons. Recognizing that refugees and
internally displaced persons (IDPs) with disabilities are among some
of the most excluded and marginalized of displaced persons in the
world, the Women’s Refugee Commission launched a project, cofunded
by UNHCR, to address the rights and needs of displaced
persons with disabilities in September 2007. The project addressed
the needs of refugees and IDPs with both physical and mental
disabilities, with a particular focus on the needs of women (including
elderly women), youth and children.

The overall goals of the project were to enhance understanding of
the challenges faced by refugees and displaced persons with
disabilities, as well as their skills and potentials; to increase access
to mainstream services for persons with disabilities, as well as to
improve provision of specialized services; to promote greater inclusion
and participation of persons with disabilities in community affairs,
decision-making processes, project planning, implementation and
management; and, finally, to ensure better protection for displaced
persons with disabilities and to strengthen protection responses to
the risks they face. The principal aim of the project was to produce
a resource kit that would be of direct, practical use to UN and local
and international NGO field staff working with displaced persons
with mental, physical and sensory disabilities.

The Resource Kit is
available at womensrefugeecommission.org/special/disabilities.php.
The project sought to map existing services for displaced persons
with disabilities in a range of countries and displacement situations,
as well as identify examples of good practices and gaps. In addition
to extensive desk research and liaison with relevant organizations
engaged in this field, the project commissioned five field studies in
select countries across different geographic regions and covering
a broad range of displacement situations. (See Annex D, p. 50.) The
field studies focused on conditions for displaced persons with
disabilities in developing countries where, generally, there were
fewer opportunities for refugees to be integrated into existing
services than for persons with disabilities in industrialized countries.
Due to a variety of reasons and constraints, the field studies focused
exclusively on the situation facing refugees and asylum seekers
with disabilities.10 However, in reality both refugees and IDPs
with disabilities face very similar challenges as a result of their
displacement. The project therefore addresses the needs of both
refugees and IDPs with disabilities in the Resource Kit.