Disability Inclusion in Humanitarian Crises

The introduction highlights the challenges faced by persons with disabilities during humanitarian crises and the frequent neglect of their needs and abilities. It also addresses the main international norms established to support them. Following this, the introduction discusses the importance of examining the development of disability norms at different levels of global governance. It then presents the book’s central research question and main argument, and concludes with an outline of the book’s contents.

This chapter develops a theoretical framework and methods for studying disability inclusion at different levels of global governance based on different strands of IR norm theory. It also discusses the methods of data collection and analysis for each level of global governance and develops a multi-level perspective that goes beyond traditional International Law and IR approaches to understand the (limited) impact of disability inclusion in humanitarian crises so far.

This chapter examines the traditional views on disability (e.g., the charity and medical models), how activists, organizations of persons with disability (OPDs), and international organizations made disability a human rights issue, and discusses the central relevance of the CRPD for humanitarian policy and practice. In short, this chapter discusses how and to which extent a human rights model of disability has been institutionalized at the international level.

This chapter studies how the main international actors in the humanitarian system—donors, intergovernmental bodies, and humanitarian organizations—have translated disability inclusion into their policies. After a brief introduction, the second part investigates the policies of the main humanitarian donors. It shows that despite growing attention, donor governments vary considerably in their approaches to disability inclusion and need to improve their translation further. The third part studies translation at the interorganizational level. This part explores how humanitarian organizations work with the four “must-do” action: (1) promote meaningful participation of persons with disabilities, (2) address barriers, (3) exercise data collection and monitoring, and (4) engage in empowerment and capacity building. It reveals that humanitarian organizations only gradually adapt their practices and struggle with considering the diversity of the populations they seek to support. The fourth part of this chapter comparatively describes the measures that individual organizations have taken so far to translate disability inclusion. Finally, a comparative analysis reveals that most donor approaches are too abstract and general for implementation and that the humanitarian organizations need to develop their capacities for disability inclusion further.

This chapter comparatively examines the implementation of disability inclusion in two humanitarian crises, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh and South Sudan. These divergent cases illustrate in different ways the challenges and opportunities for implementing disability inclusion in complex and protracted emergencies. It shows that many organizations know about the CRPD and recognize the need to become disability-inclusive. However, most struggle with the implementation of the disability inclusion norm cluster. This chapter elucidates the reasons for incomplete implementation and limited impact of disability inclusion.

This chapter analyzes the key findings using the theoretical framework we developed in Chapter 2. Importantly, we highlight important differences among the levels of global governance and show the shortcomings of norm robustness as a concept for the study of norm translation and implementation. The robustness of a norm cluster cannot be explained well by contestation, deliberate norm violation, or intended non-compliance. Rather, other policy priorities and lack of capacities account for the lack of implementation and the relatively low impact of inclusion in the lives of persons with disabilities. We call this norm evasion. The multi-level approach implies a sea change in the study of International Law and IR, which need to leave their traditional confines behind. They should extend their reach and use more multi-method research to study all governance levels, as well as the interaction among them. In the final section, we also provide recommendations on how to address diversity in humanitarian action.

The concluding chapter summarizes the findings and discusses the shortcomings of current International Law and IR norm theory. It highlights the need for a multi-level perspective for studying norm robustness. Furthermore, it highlights the need to integrate a multi-level, mixed method approach to norms on diversity and inclusion to understand the impact of norms at the various levels of global governance. The final section stresses the importance for more comparative research with other, sometimes overlapping norm clusters (e.g., on gender, racism, LGBTQI+, or older persons) to deepen our insight on norm development and impact, as well as about the interaction of governmental and non-governmental action at various levels.