Ross Jackson/Staff Reporter
Experts at the Fifth Shafallah International Forum have said that prejudice against and abuse of people with disabilities is alarmingly frequent in disaster-struck areas, although programmes in some countries have made significant contributions to improving the lives and reducing the impact of disasters for disabled people.
RefugePoint protection officer Devon Cone has been working at the Kenyan Daddab Refugee Camp along the Somali border, where many refugees with disabilities have been subjected to abuse and assaults such as stoning, beating, burning and sexual abuse from other refugees.
She said that harsh treatment has led many protective parents to leave refugee camps with their children and head to urban areas in Kenya, as they cannot return home.
Unfortunately, NGO medical staff are not equipped or prepared to provide the kind of therapy needed by many people, and prosthetic limbs wear out quickly and other supporting devices are hard to use in that environment.
Cone also said that disabled refugees in urban areas struggle to earn a living, or if their child is disabled often find that they cannot care for their child and earn money at the same time.
In these urban areas, people with disabilities can become increasingly isolated due to a lack of ramps and accessible facilities, although physical therapy can often address this.
Unfortunately, most agencies focus their efforts on aid camps, and urban areas are either ignored or inadequately covered.
Education support is not available, and in many large urban environments, such as Cairo, agencies such as the UN High Commission on Refugees cannot reach the dispersed groups of displaced people.
Even if refugees find these agency offices, the staff is unprepared to care for people with disabilities.
Rooshey Hasnain, project director at the University of Illinois, Chicago, said that the number of disasters has been steadily increasing in recent decades, but better preparation and prevention has in fact reduced the number of fatalities.
She said that 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina changed peoples attitudes in the US from the “wait-for-help” mindset to more proactive and engaged disaster preparation.
She gave the example of a woman in a wheelchair who called the transit department in New Orleans for emergency transport from her home. Over the phone she was given assurances that help would come, and yet she drowned while still on the phone.
Katrina and the resulting floods caused around 1,800 deaths. Victims were predominantly Black and poor, with around 25% having some disability.
This disaster led to the creation of the Office of Disability Integration and Coordination, which is working to reduce the inequality between disabled and non-disabled people.
Hasnain said that among the respondents to survey conducted by her department, 57% of people with disabilities did not know who to contact in their community during an emergency, 61% had no evacuation plan for their home and 32% do not know how to quickly evacuate their workplace.
Hasnain also sited Turkey as an example where important lessons were learned, where earthquakes in 2011 revealed the lack of mental health specialists in the country, especially for children.
Hasnain echoed a call from Cone for more people with disabilities to be involved in “different cycles in disaster management” so that their needs can be met and their dignity restored.
Programmes run by institutions such as the Centre for Disability in Development (CDD) in Bangladesh have contributed significantly to the decline in disaster-related casualties by properly training government and civilian relief workers in how to care for people with disabilities.
In Bangladesh, a country that sees frequent floods and cyclones, houses are made of light materials, and so elevated and reinforced storm shelters are a common refuge from bad weather.
CDD director Nazmul Bari said that his agency has been working with the government to make these shelters more accessible for people with disability, as well as arrange for easier collection of emergency supplies and registration for evacuation for disabled people.
A key reason for the CDD’s success is the livelihood training programme, teaching people with disabilities skills such as animal husbandry, fishing and maintaining floating gardens so that they can thrive independently in a disaster zone.
