Partnerships with organizations of persons with disabilities

Partnerships and collaboration improve the effectiveness and accountability of humanitarian operations. They help directlyto achieve inclusion and ensure that humanitarian action benefits from and contributes to development. Respectful of the disabilitycommunity's motto (‘Nothing about us, without us’), humanitarian stakeholders must work with persons with disabilities andtheir representative organizations rather than plan or make decisions on their behalf.

As with any partnership, common interests, added value, expectations and capacity development should be agreed from the beginning.

Partnerships between OPDs and humanitarian stakeholders before, during and after a crisis:

Not all OPDs have a mission that aligns with humanitarian action. In many cases, OPDs will not have engaged with the humanitariansector and the humanitarian programme cycle, or its coordination mechanisms, response and recovery programmes, and fundingprocedures. Often, they have had few opportunities to partner and collaborate with humanitarian organizations. It is thereforeimportant to manage expectations.

While humanitarian stakeholders may want to develop partnerships with OPDs, their ability to do so is frequently limited bytheir limited knowledge of the disability movement, prejudices about persons with disabilities, and the perception that disabilityshould be addressed by disability-focused organizations.

The role of OPDs in a partnership or collaboration with humanitarian stakeholders will depend on their pre-crisis capacities, their mandate, and their ability to represent all persons with disabilities ora specific group of persons with disabilities. When OPDs are not present, or existing OPDs do not have adequate capacity,humanitarian actors should establish contact with regional or global OPD networks.

OPDs can fulfil many roles and functions. The list below is not exhaustive but may be a useful starting point when humanitarianactors approach OPDs to discuss cooperation. OPDs may: