Organizations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs)

Humanitarian actors should include OPDs representing the diversity of persons with disabilities in all phases of the humanitarianprogramme cycle. They can share their knowledge and expertise about disability, provide leadership, and ensure that personswith disabilities are fully included and fully participate in humanitarian action. When no OPDs are locally present, humanitarianactors should involve peer-support groups or individuals with disabilities.

Preparedness
  • Promote the use of tools tested in humanitarian contexts, such as the Washington Group Short Set of Disability Questions for data collection, which make it possible to disaggregate data by sex, age and disability.
  • Advocate for the rights of persons with disabilities in situations of risk and emergencies and for all disaster risk reduction programmes and emergency preparedness programmes to be fully accessible to persons with disabilities.
  • Raise awareness and provide training to community members, persons with disabilities, humanitarian stakeholders, and first responders on the needs, rights and capacities of persons with disabilities. Explain their communications requirements.
  • Advocate for refugees with disabilities to have access to national services and systems.
Needs assessment and analysis
  • Participate in needs assessments and the collection of quantitative and qualitative information. Participate in identifying both barriers that impede the inclusion of persons with disabilities and enablers that facilitate their inclusion.
  • Help to develop tools and design accessible needs assessments. These should permit reasonable accommodations, and should include persons with disabilities in assessment teams and focus group discussions, etc.
Strategic response planning
  • Apply a rights-based approach to disability in order to make humanitarian stakeholders and governments accountable when they design humanitarian response plans and other humanitarian planning tools.
  • Represent disability constituencies in meetings and advocate for the rights of persons with disabilities.
  • Reach out to persons with disabilities from affected populations, including refugees and other displaced persons, and include them in local OPD networks.
Resource mobilization
  • Support the development of budgets that fund activities promoting the inclusion of persons with disabilities. Budgets should make provision for reasonable accommodations, appropriate housing, OPD participation, etc.
  • Support general advocacy to increase funding to respond to crises.
  • Contribute to and facilitate mobilization of resources at all levels.
Implementation and monitoring
  • Participate in data collection for monitoring and reporting on access to services and assistance, protection risks, human rights violations, use of funding, etc.
  • Support interventions that benefit at-risk groups, including persons with disabilities.
  • Advise on the development of accessible infrastructures, facilities and communication materials.
Evaluation
  • Assist evaluation teams to assess accessibility and the degree to which persons with disabilities can fully exercise their human rights, taking gender, age and disability diversity into account.
  • Identify appropriate questions for inclusion in evaluations. With respect to persons with disabilities, evaluations should address accessibility, availability, affordability, accountability, and quality of services, as well as the effectiveness, efficiency, impact and the relevance of the response.
  • In cooperation with government and humanitarian stakeholders, collect and document good practices and lessons learned, with respect to inclusion and the accessibility of assistance and protection.
  • Advocate that evaluation findings must be integrated in programme planning and implementation.
Coordination
  • Identify focal points in OPDs who can participate in cluster and sub-cluster meetings at all levels, including as members of the humanitarian response team.
  • Coordinate OPDs (both national and local) and contribute their inputs, using the 5W tool, to humanitarian coordination mechanisms.99
  • Participate in collecting information on risks and barriers that persons with disabilities face, and their access to services. Provide feedback to humanitarian actors and disability focal points.
Information management 100
  • Encourage information managers to collect and analyse information on the degree to which persons with disabilities have access to assistance and protection services.
  • Support the interpretation and analysis of information on disability trends and disability programmes.
  • Ensure that information is disseminated in multiple accessible formats to OPD members, persons with disabilities, and other audiences.
  • Communicate data and assessments on persons with disabilities to disability focal points and coordination mechanisms.
  • Require that the collection, storage or processing of sensitive personal data is carried out in line with appropriate data ethics and protection principles.101