Empowerment and participation: good practices from South & South-East Asia in disability inclusive disaster risk management

This report presents good practices showing examples of inclusion and active participation of persons with disabilities in disaster risk management. As they got engaged in community and higher-level advocacy meetings, the women and men portrayed in this paper have shed the stigma of mere recipients and become valued contributors to risk reduction efforts. Empowered, their dedication has become palpable: through their contribution to better risk management, their lives have been transformed, perceptions changed, and risks reduced.

The paper is structured in three sections that illustrate general recommendations towards greater participation of persons with disabilities. Section A provides the background on disability inclusive disaster risk management and reviews existing guidelines as to how the participation of people with disabilities in disaster risk management can be facilitated.

Section B contains the actual good practices, structured in three separate chapters that illustrate general recommendations towards greater participation of persons with disabilities. Each practice highlights the involvement of individual persons as well as groups, describes the initial setting, the achievements, and the lessons learned from the practice. Each practice concludes with a box with key insights. The final section C presents the key recommendations that can be drawn from the good practices and that are geared to inform future programming.