Crises, Conflict and Disability

Ensuring Equality

David Mitchell, Valerie Karr, David Mitchell, Valerie Karr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781135089191
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Disabilities in Sociology

People with disabilities are among the most adversely affected during conflict situations or when natural disasters strike. They experience higher mortality rates, have fewer available resources and less access to help, especially in refugee camps, as well as in post-disaster environments. Already subject to severe discrimination in many societies, people with disabilities are often overlooked during emergency evacuation, relief, recovery and rebuilding efforts.

Countries party to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities must take all necessary measures to ensure the protection and safety of people with disabilities during situations of armed conflict, humanitarian emergencies, and natural disasters. Such aid should be designed to support preparedness, response, recovery and rebuilding. This book includes perspectives from around the globe and explores the implications at the policy, programme, and personal level, discussing issues such as:

• How can national laws, policies, and regulations provide guidance, methods and strategies to integrate and coordinate inclusive emergency management?
• What should people with disabilities know in order to be prepared for emergency situations? What lessons have we learned from past experiences?
• What are the current shortfalls (physical and cultural) that put people with disabilities at risk during emergencies and what can be done to improve these situations (e.g. through new technologies and disaster planning)?
• How does disability affect people's experiences as refugees and other displaced situations; what programmes and best practices are in place to protect and promote their rights during their period of displacement?
• How must disabled people with disabilities be factored in to the resettlement and rebuilding process; does an opportunity for ensuring universal access exist in the rebuilding process?
• What is the impact of disasters and conflicts on such special populations as disabled women, disabled children, and those with intellectual disabilities?

Spotlighting a pressing issue that has long been neglected in emergency planning fields, this innovative book discusses how to meet the needs of people with disabilities in crises and conflict situations. It is an important reference for all those working in or researching disability and inclusion, and emergency and disaster management, both in developed and developing countries.

1 Introduction

Valerie Karr and David Mitchell

DOI: 10.4324/9780203069943-1

In all wars and disasters, it is persons with disabilities who are first to die; persons with disabilities who are first to get disease and infection; and it is persons with disabilities who are the last to get resources and medicines when they are handed out. They are treated as the bottom of the pile.¹

Taking four of the most common natural disasters — earthquakes, tropical cyclones, floods and droughts — a United Nations report estimated that 75 per cent of the world’s population lived in areas affected at least once during the period 1980–2000.² In addition, according to the United Nations Development Programme, during the 1990s a total of fifty-three armed conflicts resulted in 3.9 million deaths.³ During these situations of risk, the rights and needs of persons with disabilities have long been neglected and unaccounted for. From the earthquake and tsunami in Japan to the plight of those in Haiti as they try to rebuild, many people experience disability as a result of disaster or, due to their disability and the lack of necessary resources to assist them in evacuation, many perish.

The needs of those with disabilities, more than one billion people around the world,⁴ are often forgotten during emergency relief, recovery and rebuilding efforts. According to emergency management statistics, when natural disasters strike, those with disabilities die in far higher percentages of the population than other people⁵ and have far fewer resources and less access to help in refugee camps and in post-disaster environments. As in the case of Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 and the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, persons with disabilities are left behind in the evacuation efforts.⁶ In addition, environmental barriers — such as destroyed roads and blocked passages — create a greater obstacle to those with mobility issues. For persons with disabilities living in emergency shelters, sanitary latrine arrangements may be inaccessible, and where food aid is distributed in refugee camps, those with disabilities are often at the back of the queue and many go hungry.⁷ Persons with disabilities are also more exposed to risks such as physical and sexual violence, discrimination, and harassment.

Under Article 11 (Situations of Risk and Humanitarian Emergencies) of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,⁸ countries party to the Convention and the international community must take all necessary measures to ensure the protection and safety of persons with disabilities during situations of armed conflict, humanitarian emergencies, and natural disasters. This book, Crises, Conflict and Disability: Ensuring Equality, will highlight aspects of disaster and conflict, from preparedness to response to recovery and rebuilding, for ensuring the rights of persons with disabilities.

Purpose of the book

This book focuses on the impact of natural and man-made disasters on persons with disabilities. Natural disasters include earthquakes/tsunamis, extreme weather events, famines, fires and volcanoes. Man-made disasters include environmental degradation, HIV/AIDS, nuclear disasters, political instability, and wars/armed conflicts. These events have a significant impact on persons with disabilities, as well as being a cause of disabilities. The main themes in this book (man-made and natural disasters) will highlight diverse perspectives around the globe and illustrate these issues and their implications at the policy, programme, and personal level. We hope to highlight the pressing issue, long neglected in emergency planning fields, of how to meet the needs of persons with disabilities in disaster and conflict situations.

Our target audiences are international and national agencies concerned with disabilities, policy-makers in both developed and developing countries, organizations representing persons with disabilities, non-governmental organizations, university researchers, and instructors in courses on development studies and disability studies.

Structure of the book

In Part I of this book, the chapters will provide an overview of the role of the United Nations, including the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, in protecting and promoting the rights of persons with disabilities during disasters and conflict. This section also provides an overview of inclusive planning and the development of humanitarian responses from a rights-based perspective, as well as participatory strategies for raising the preparedness of persons with disabilities. Lastly, issues concerning the special populations of women, children, and those exposed to HIV/AIDS are explored.

In Part II, the chapters focus on the effect of disasters on persons with disabilities, including an overview of specific needs and measures to ensure inclusion. Strategies for the inclusion of persons with disabilities during disaster management initiatives are explored, along with the special topics of: environmental degradation and post-disaster opportunities for reducing discrimination, building safe shelters and accessible housing options, and universal school-based programmes. Case studies from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan are presented, with lessons learned.

Part III focuses on the impact of conflict on persons with disabilities, including those with intellectual and development disabilities, with an overview of opportunities for inclusive post-conflict policy development. Specific case studies come from South Africa, Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, Iraq, Lebanon, Nicaragua, New Zealand, and Uganda. Implications for practice are illustrated.

Part I: Overview

In Chapter 2, Mary Crock, Naomi Hart and Ron McCallum review the importance of Article 11 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which requires member states to take all necessary measures to ensure the protection and safety of persons with disabilities in situations of risk, including situations of armed conflict, humanitarian emergencies and the occurrence of natural disasters. Among the core human rights treaties, CRPD’s Article 11 encompasses a much wider range of rights, based on the ‘social’ model of disability, relating to social inclusion, community participation and personal development.

In Chapter 3, Akiko Ito outlines how the United Nations General Assembly addresses disability as a cross-cutting development concern, reiterating the urgent need to include a disability perspective and persons with disabilities in all development agendas, including in disaster risk reduction and management efforts. This chapter highlights how the UN offers opportunities to set the stage for broader and lasting reforms to develop disability-responsive socio-economic policies and budgeting frameworks. Behind each crisis there exists an opportunity to advance the disability-inclusive development goals to benefit all members of society in the long run.

Armando J. Vasquez Barrios, in Chapter 4, provides an overview of inclusive planning in humanitarian response. He first outlines the factors that cause persons with disabilities to be disproportionately affected by disasters, emergencies and conflict. He then provides key strategies to facilitate the integration of disability issues in the areas of emergencies and disasters, stressing the importance of persons with disabilities as partners in action and humanitarian response. In Chapter 5, Dale Buscher and Emma Pearce focus on the necessary integration of the often divergent disability and humanitarian fields. Their longitudinal study analyses field-based and global desk research undertaken to identify protection risks and gaps in services for refugees living with disabilities, and articulates key findings of the Women’s Refugee Commission’s five-country field assessments. Their chapter concludes with the next steps required to institutionalize changes in practice globally to improve the well-being, inclusion and dignity of those displaced by conflict and crises who are living with disabilities.

In Chapter 6, Babs Surujlal and Rolf Gaede identify participatory strategies for raising the preparedness of persons with disabilities during conflict or natural disasters. This chapter focuses on different methodologies that may be adopted to prepare persons with disabilities, as well as individuals who work with them, to respond swiftly and effectively in conflict or natural disaster situations. Susan Dunn and Susan Sygall promote the building of leadership capacity of women within the disability community in Chapter 7, stating that disabled women activists must continue to take their rightful place as leaders and adopt a ‘rights-bearing attitude’ so that international development and humanitarian organizations can begin to utilize this powerful untapped resource. In Chapter 8, Poul Rohleder, Arne Henning Eide and Leslie Swartz outline the various risk factors that place people with disabilities at risk for HIV infection, stressing the need for inclusion in mainstream HIV prevention, and outlining recommendations for inclusive future practices.

In 1970, Bangladesh was declared an independent state from West Pakistan after a nine-month-long civil war. The genocide that took place resulted in nearly 3 million dead and thousands with physical and emotional injuries. In Chapter 9, Saima Hossain outlines the development of a robust disability NGO sector post-war and the challenges facing a country with limited resources and frequently occurring natural and man-made disasters. Her chapter outlines provisions of services for persons with disabilities after natural and man-made crisis situations.

Part II: Disability and disaster

Badaoui Rouhban introduces this section, in Chapter 10, by outlining the burden of disasters’ impact and the vulnerability of persons with disabilities during such times. His chapter explores the need for disaster managers to anticipate risks and to respond to disasters in an inclusive manner through community risk-mapping exercises and opportunities to share experiences and best practices of disaster resilience with others. This chapter provides examples of how emergency situations caused by disasters may provide an opportunity to challenge prejudice and discrimination and to ‘build back better’ by ensuring the inclusion of persons with disabilities, women and children in families, schools and communities. In Chapter 11, Janet Njelesani, Shaun Cleaver and Myroslava Tataryn build the case for using a human rights-based approach to including persons with disabilities in disaster management initiatives and present strategies to address the rights of persons with disabilities in such initiatives.

In Chapter 12, Mike Meaney explores Habitat for Humanity’s approach to investing in preparedness and response. This chapter focuses on interventions, which can take place both before and after a disaster, to ensure that people with disabilities have safe shelter in safe communities. Bringing together examples from around the world of Habitat’s work, Meaney highlights disaster risk reduction and housing models. Rony Berger, in Chapter 13, illustrates the high risks for children and adolescents during disasters and outlines a universal school-based programme, ERASE-STRESS, geared toward enhancing children’s and adolescents’ resiliency and reducing the risk of them developing long-term post-traumatic symptoms.

In Chapter 14, Marcie Roth, of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, presents promising practices in disability-inclusive emergency management through a case study of the United States. She outlines the reforms that were made in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and the tragic consequences of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This chapter highlights the sweeping changes in all aspects of emergency management, the renewed commitment to the civil rights of people with disabilities as a community imperative, and the shift from treating people with disabilities as liabilities in a disaster to engaging them as potential assets and identifying steps that can be taken to engage the whole community as ‘force multipliers’ in building and sustaining resilient communities. Susan Stork-Finlay presents a case study of disability-inclusive emergency management from an Australian perspective, in Chapter 15, reviewing the improvements made since the grassroots disability advocacy campaign that resulted from the 2009 Victorian bushfires. Jill Mitchell presents New Zealand’s development of inclusive disaster preparedness, response and recovery in Chapter 16, outlining examples from different governmental and non-governmental agencies and individuals. Her main focus is on the 2011 Canterbury earthquakes.

In Chapter 17, Nagase Osamu examines the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan and its painful lessons. This disaster has made visible, in addition to the obvious lack of preparedness for the disability community, the lack of reasonable accommodation in a disaster situation, including in the provision of warning, shelter and temporary housing for those with disabilities. In the final chapter of this section, Mirella Schwinge and Michelle Proyer (Chapter 18) explore the relevance of environmental degradation for disability and of persons with disabilities as agents for sustainable development. In this chapter, they share the outcomes of a systematic literature review and map the landscape of research, policy and practice, which integrate environmental issues with disability, providing illustrative examples from different regions of the world.

Section III: Disability and conflict

In Chapter 19, Rebecca Irvine provides an overview of inclusive policy development post-conflict with case studies from South Africa, Northern Ireland, and Sierra Leone. She posits that a disability community must be well-organized, inclusive of all types of disability, and possess the political understanding and awareness to take advantage of available opportunities. In Chapter 20, Brigitte Rohwerder focuses on the inclusion of a more specific population, persons with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities. Her chapter draws on a wide range of sources...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Routledge Advances in Disability Studies
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• PART I Overview
• PART II Disability and disaster
• PART III Disability and conflict
• Index