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This guidance is designed for UNICEF field staff – including humanitarian field officers, coordinators, specialist and advisors – as well as UNICEF’s partners and others involved in humanitarian work. It provides practical tips and offers entry points for making sure that humanitarian action takes children with disabilities into account. There are 5 other associated guidelines. 

Chapters include: 

impact of emergiencies on health of children and adolescents with disabilities
why children and adolescents with disabilities are excluded health and HIV/AIDS interventions
frameworks and approaches
programmatic actions
preparedness
response and early recovery
recovery and reconstruction
practical tips

"The purpose of Including Children with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action is to strengthen the inclusion of children and women with disabilities, and their families, in emergency preparedness, response and early recovery, and recovery and reconstruction. This series of booklets provides insight into the situation of children with disabilities in humanitarian contexts, highlights the ways in which they are excluded from humanitarian action, and offers practical actions and tips to better include children and adolescents with disabilities in all stages of humanitarian action. The booklets were created in response to UNICEF colleagues in the field expressing a need for a practical resource to guide their work. The information and recommendations are based on evidence and good practices gathered from literature and field staff experiences. The six booklets on how to include children and adolescents with disabilities in humanitarian programmes are as follows: 1) general guidance; 2) child protection; 3) education; 4) health and HIV/AIDS; 5) nutrition; 6) water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH)".

General guidance available July 2017. Others to follow.

In addition to the PDF versions in English, Arabic and French, the guidance is also available in a range of accessible formats, including EPUB, a Braille-ready file and accessible HTML formats. 

The guidance was developed in collaboration with Handicap International.

It is reported that people with disabilities and older people in South Sudan face greater risks of being caught in fighting and greater challenges in getting necessary humanitarian assistance. In February and March 2017, Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 45 people with disabilities and older people in displacement sites in Juba and Malakal, as well as in Panyijar county in the former Unity state, where the UN declared famine in two counties in February. Human Rights Watch also met with aid organizations and the South Sudan Human Rights Commission. The challenges faced by people with disabilities are reported.

"This literature review covers a comprehensive body of literature targeting data from 2007 onwards in low and middle-income countries. It presents evidence from a literature review that retrieved and screened 1,011 articles and 546 grey literature sources. A total of 107 relevant sources were selected from the published and grey literature in accordance with the study design, of which 53 were included in the final review. The paper explains the literature review methodology, discusses concepts and definitions of resilience and introduces key global frameworks relating to climate change, disaster risk reduction and development"

The CBM smartphone app 'Humanitarian Hands-on Tool' (HHoT) provides step-by-step guidance on how to implement an inclusive emergency response. With disability-inclusive humanitarian action broken down into individual task cards, which explain the basic 'how-to' details in simple language and images, this web-based tool and downloadable mobile app aims to become the ‘go-to’ field resource for all agencies planning humanitarian work that leaves no-one behind

This checklist, derived from the programmatic actions outlined in the Including children with disabilities in humanitarian action: General guidance, can help determine whether key actions to include children and adolescents with disabilities in response and early recovery are being taken

This document is the result of collaboration between a working group of rehabilitation experts convened by WHO and external consultations. It is thus based on collective experience in rehabilitation during responses to recent large-scale emergencies and also on published data. In time, the minimum standards for rehabilitation in emergencies will be part of a broader series of publications based on the Classification and minimum standards for foreign medical teams in sudden onset disaster.

The purpose of this document is to extend these standards for physical rehabilitation and provide guidance to emergency medical teams (EMTs, formerly known as “foreign medical teams”) on building or strengthening their capacity for and work in rehabilitation within defined coordination mechanisms.The standards and recommendations given in this document will ensure that EMTs, both national and international, will better prevent patient complications and ensuing impairment and ensure a continuum of care beyond their departure from the affected area. This document gives the minimum standards for EMTs in regard to the workforce, the field hospital environment, rehabilitation equipment and consumables and information management. Notably, the standards call for:

• at least one rehabilitation professional per 20 beds at the time of initial deployment, with further recruitment depending on case-load and local rehabilitation capacity;

• allocation of a purpose-specific rehabilitation space of at least 12 m2 for all type 3 EMTs; and

• deployment of EMTs with at least the essential rehabilitation equipment and consumables according to type.

EMTs are encouraged to exceed the minimum standards outlined in this document; supplementary recommendations are included. All teams on the Global Classification List of quality assured teams are required to use the minimum technical standards for rehabilitation, and demonstration of adherence to the standards will be necessary for verification. Support in achieving the minimum standards will be available through EMT mentoring, if necessary

This Special Appeal covers the funding requirements for physical rehabilitation activities for all persons with disabilities – among them, victims of armed conflict, other situations of violence and mines/ERW – as well as for initiatives related to mine action. It also summarizes the ICRC’s wider approach to addressing the needs of persons with disabilities, including its other efforts to facilitate the social and economic aspects of inclusion. The work of the Physical Rehabilitation Programme (PRP) and the Special Fund for the Disabled (SFD) is outlined. Topics associated with reducing the impact of weapon contamination and with promoting legal frameworks and government are discussed. 

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to an increased understanding of the perceived and actual challenges humanitarians face in operational contexts as they apply the principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence. A snapshot is provided of four case studies; Colombia, Nepal, northern Syria and South Sudan. Through a combination of field research, headquarters interviews, desk research, and a webinar, views and observations are presented from the humanitarian community. These observations provide a glimpse into the challenges faced by principled humanitarians. As a result the paper puts forward seven recommendations intended to assist humanitarians and states to sharpen tools and strengthen approaches when implementing principled humanitarian protection and assistance. An addendum to this study provides perspectives from selected members of the donor community. This research was conducted through interviews with state representatives in Geneva, aiming to understand how donors perceive their responsibilities in upholding the humanitarian principles and the Good Humanitarian Donorship Principles. This final chapter highlights challenges faced by states while supporting principled humanitarian action, particularly in conflict zones. On the basis of this research, additional recommendations for both states and humanitarians are proposed to strengthen the adherence to the humanitarian principles