Disabled people are ‘lost and excluded’ when disasters hit, says UN advocate

People with disabilities are most at risk and last to be looked for in disasters like earthquakes and floods, a UN official has said.

A lack of available data means they remain “lost and excluded” from rescue operations, said Gertrude Fefoame, the new chair of the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities.

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People with disabilities, and the organisations representing them, are not consulted in programmes dealing with disaster management and assessing risks, she added. In many places, there is no data available on who is living with which disability.

“If you don’t have data [on people with disabilities], why are you going to look for them? You don’t know who is missing. When you’re not counted, you’re already excluded. That is the situation we experience in most cases.”

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