Humanitarian leadership (Emergency/Resident Coordinator, Humanitarian Country Team)85

For this section refer toGuidance on strengthening disability inclusion in Humanitarian Response Plans.

Preparedness
  • Integrate disability inclusion in the Terms of Reference for Humanitarian Country Teams (HCTs).
  • Encourage the government to nominate a disability focal point for the HCT.
  • Maintain oversight to ensure that all preparedness and contingency plans are inclusive of persons with disabilities: promote the IASC guidelines on inclusion of persons with disabilities in humanitarian action; ensure that OPDs and persons with disabilities participate in all relevant processes; provide capacity development on disability to the HCT.
  • Ensure that preparedness and contingency plans are adequately resourced (in terms of funding and human resources) for accessibility and inclusion of persons with disabilities in preparedness and contingency plans.
Needs assessment and analysis
  • Ensure that needs assessment processes that estimate the severity of needs consider the impact of the situation on persons with disabilities and their families.
  • Ensure that multisectoral needs assessments consider the requirements, risks, skills, capacities, and views and perceptions of persons with disabilities.
  • All data collected in the course of multisectoral needs assessments should be disaggregated by sex, age and disability (using data collection tools tested in humanitarian contexts, such as the Washington Group Short Set of Disability Questions).
  • Include persons with disabilities and OPDs in needs assessment teams.
Strategic response planning
  • Include disability in the strategic and results frameworks of response plans; ensure that reporting reflects the diversity of persons with disabilities.
  • Ensure that all strategic response plans (humanitarian response plans, rapid response plans, etc.) include all persons with disabilities who are in need.
  • Describe in the plan how the response will address factors that help to heighten the risks faced by persons with disabilities.
  • Involve OPDs in developing the humanitarian response plan.
Resource mobilization
  • Encourage donors to allocate response funding for persons with disabilities and their inclusion in response actions.
  • Define criteria on inclusion of persons with disabilities for flash appeals, emergency response funds, country-based pooled funds and other emergency funding mechanisms.
  • Ensure that budget programmers are trained in disability inclusion. Ensure that sufficient resources are allocated to improving accessibility and providing reasonable accommodations.
Implementation and monitoring
  • Systematically include inclusion and protection of persons with disabilities in the agendas of HCT meetings.
  • Ensure that monitoring tools address the concerns of persons with disabilities; include accessibility, risks and risk management, specific requirements, views and perceptions. Ensure that persons with disabilities participate in monitoring, needs assessments and the response more generally.
Evaluation
  • Encourage all sectors and clusters to include disability inclusion (protection, safety and equal access) in their evaluations.
  • Ensure that persons with disabilities participate in sectoral and intersectoral evaluations.
  • Disseminate evaluation findings in multiple accessible formats. Ensure that all sectors use evaluation findings when they plan their programmes or make adjustments to them.
Coordination
  • Ensure that disability focal points and/or OPDs are included in inter-cluster meetings.
  • Promote disability mainstreaming across humanitarian action (tools, standards), using these guidelines.
Information management 86
  • Obtain agreement, including with government, on system-wide arrangements for collecting and sharing data on persons with disabilities in line with data ethics and protection principles.87
  • Systematically report on persons with disabilities; where no information is available, report ‘no information available’.
  • Require that all collection, analysis and use of data is disaggregated by sex, age and disability.