On December 6, I briefed the United Nations Security Council at its first informal meeting in five years on the protection of people with disabilities in armed conflict.
During the meeting, I shared evidence collected over a decade and a video from Ghazal, a 15-year-old girl with a disability from Gaza, to demonstrate that in conflict-affected communities, people with disabilities are among those most at risk, yet they remain largely invisible.
Human Rights Watch research, including in Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Iraq, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen, shows that people with disabilities have faced not only violent attacks, but abandonment, distinct harms during displacement, and neglect in humanitarian responses. Children with disabilities, as I’ve most recently investigated in Gaza, experience multiple and intersecting forms of violence, including a particularly high risk of death and injury.
In 2019, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2745. It calls upon states and warring parties to protect persons with disabilities in armed conflicts and ensure they have access to justice, basic services, and humanitarian assistance. The resolution was a historic win for people with disabilities and disability rights advocates.
Unfortunately, its implementation remains inadequate. Recognizing the lack of progress, Security Council member states have now recommitted to implementing the resolution and mainstreaming disability across the council’s work.
In my statement, we urged the council to permanently add the situation of people with disabilities in armed conflicts and humanitarian emergencies to its agenda. This call, reinforced by the International Disability Alliance and many states, offers an excellent roadmap for turning commitments and promises into reality.
We called on the council to ensure persons with disabilities’ rights and needs are addressed across its work and decisions, including by inviting people with disabilities as briefers and regularly consulting with them, which many states agreed is currently a gap.
As someone who’s spent years documenting the unique risks to children with disabilities, I felt it critical to call on the council to strengthen their protection in the Children and Armed Conflict agenda’s mandate, including in its monitoring and reporting mechanism. These concrete actions will demonstrate the council’s true commitment not only to Resolution 2475 and people with disabilities, but to protecting all civilians.
