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Full and effective participation in society by people with disabilities implies the obligation to provide them with specific protection. EU Directive 2003/9 specifies that national legislation must take into account the specific situation of vulnerable people, such as those with disabilities, with regard to material reception conditions. In all cases, their specific needs should be individually assessed. This means that EU Member States should provide “medical or other necessary assistance” to asylum seekers with particular needs.

Historically, US refugee admissions policy hinged on the notion of ‘political persecution’ and was coloured by foreign policy interests. This bias was addressed to some extent by the introduction of a new system for determining refugee resettlement priorities in 1996, whereby priorities for refugee resettlement were revised to introduce greater diversity in the numbers and types of refugees to be resettled in the US.

On July 31, 2009, the United States finally joined 141 other countries in signing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), the most comprehensive human rights treaty of the 21st century. Although most disability service agencies in the US theoretically include individuals of all ethnic, racial, cultural and linguistic backgrounds among their clients, few service providers are proactive in reaching out to refugee communities.

 “I have now realised all children are the same and need to be appreciated. My encouragement to parents who have disabled children like mine is to appeal to them not to hold them in solitary confinement but instead to embrace reality and strive to give them the best in life.” Father of Ranya, a six-year-old who has been attending a school for two years in an IDP camp in Sudan.[i]

Yemen receives thousands of refugees and asylum seekers each year, due to its strategic location, and is the only country in the Arab Peninsula that is signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol. However, Yemen does not have national refugee legislation or an asylum policy or institution to deal with issues relating to refugees and other asylum-seeking populations in the country. Refugee and other asylum-related matters are mostly governed by different provisions of national laws.

The rationale for the reform of the UN humanitarian system was that, by clarifying the roles and responsibilities among UN agencies and by trying to enhance sectoral and cross-cutting coordination, the humanitarian response would be improved – providing better coordinated…

During the final month of intense conflict in Sri Lanka in 2009, over 230,000 people were reportedly forced to flee their homes because of the fighting. These new IDPs joined 65,000 other IDPs who had previously escaped from the northern conflict area between the end of 2008 and mid-April 2009. With such a huge influx of newly displaced people the temporary camps were overwhelmed.

In 2009, following violence in northwestern Pakistan and the flight of some two million people from their homes, Sightsavers undertook a rapid assessment in Jalozai IDP camp (NWFP Province). Assessors identified 188 persons with disabilities. Of these, 49% had mobility difficulties, 24% were blind or had poor vision, 9% were hearing- and speech-impaired and 18% had an intellectual disability or multiple disabilities. 

Under the assumption that one cannot do anything for others unless applying the same rules at home, I am convinced that the UN system, including UNHCR, cannot provide effective services for displaced people with disabilities unless the principles are applied equally in-house to its staff and work environment. Simply put, it is a question of practising at home what you advocate abroad.

The current understanding of disability, known as the ‘social model’, holds that the root causes of the disadvantages experienced by persons with disabilities do not lie with individuals or their impairment but rather with the discrimination inherent in facilities which are not accessible, attitudes which fail to recognise the rights, capacities and dignity of persons with disabilities, and a system which fails to notice and account for variation from the ‘ableist’ norm.