FOREWORD

In 2011, as armed militias were burning down homes in Tawergha in Libya, a woman named Hawa was unable to run because of adisability. Fortunately, she had two sisters who could carry her to safety. In the eight years since living in displacement,Hawa says she has only seen a doctor once.

I have met several people like Hawa with disabilities, who are among those displaced either by raging conflicts or extremeweather events. Adapting to the new and the unfamiliar is challenging for anyone. But when speaking to people with disabilitiesin humanitarian settings from Bangladesh to Haiti, it brings home their added difficulties if our responses fall short.

Our job is to ensure that people like Hawa are counted like any other in a humanitarian response during a crisis. It is herfundamental right – and the right of hundreds of thousands more – to access the same protection and care we provide to others.

And we must ensure that special focus is on the most marginalized amongst them, such as children and older people, who oftenrun the risk of being the most invisible.

To make this a reality the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Guidelines on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action is a welcomed and timely step in the right direction. I am grateful to the members of the Task Team on Inclusion of Personswith Disabilities in Humanitarian Action and its co-chairs UNICEF, Humanity and Inclusion (also known as Handicap International)and the International Disability Alliance, for their work in preparing these guidelines on behalf of the IASC. It comes amida growing global awareness of the rights of persons with disabilities.

These crucial system-wide Guidelines, which are a first, will ensure the inclusion of persons with disabilities in all sectorsand in all phases of humanitarian action. They are a result of an inclusive consultative process, which involved more than600 stakeholders from the humanitarian and disability sectors, including many organizations of persons with disabilities fromaround the world. In the endeavour to save lives and reduce human suffering in humanitarian crises, United Nations' agencieswill implement these guidelines in accordance with their respective mandates and the decisions of their governing bodies.

The idea to develop the Guidelines originated with the Charter on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action launched at the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul. The Charter has been endorsed in the meantime by more than 220stakeholders, including 30 Member States and 14 UN agencies. The Guidelines are a key contribution of the humanitarian sectorto the United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy (UNDIS) that the United Nations Secretary General launched in June 2019.

Everyone benefits, when we remove biases and provide opportunities for people with disabilities. The International LabourOrganization found that excluding people with disabilities from the world of work can rob countries of as much as 7 per centof their Gross Domestic Product.

Not only are we doing the right thing, our response also becomes more effective as we give voice to the voiceless and leaveno one behind.

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Mark Lowcock

Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator