UNHCR published its eleventh protection update for Ukraine on 1 September 2026, covering the second quarter of the year. It reports that the protection response run by UNHCR and its partner organisations reached 281,666 people in the first half of 2026. Over 27,200 of them are living with a disability. Of everyone reached, 68 per cent were women and girls, 31 per cent were people over 60, and 21 per cent were children.
The update doesn’t break that figure down any further. It does say what the work consisted of: 37 per cent of the response was service provision, meaning legal help, social support and psycho-social care. UNHCR and its partners also made 54 advocacy and judicial interventions aimed at improving access to rights and services for forcibly displaced and stateless people. Almost all of it is delivered locally, with 13 of the 14 partner organisations UNHCR funds in Ukraine this year being Ukrainian NGOs.
A count of people supported is a count of people who were found. Someone had to go and look. Finding one person with a disability means a worker travelling to where they are, and there are nowhere near enough workers to reach everyone that way, in Ukraine or anywhere else. We believe the direction of contact has to turn around. A person with credit on their phone can call those Ukrainian organisations themselves and ask for the legal help or the social support, instead of waiting on the chance that somebody comes to find them.
Calling for Help exists to close that gap. Digital inequality leaves refugees with disabilities cut off from help that already exists, so we send free mobile top-ups every month and the person uses them to reach whoever is best placed to help — a caseworker, a clinic, a local organisation, their own family.
We believe it is the most cost-effective humanitarian aid there is. Nobody has to be employed to find them and nobody has to travel: the credit arrives on the number they already use, once they have passed AI-based identity and anti-fraud checks. The pilot has a limited number of places while we find out what it changes.
If you have a disability and are living as a refugee, or you support someone who is, apply to the pilot. To follow what we find, join the newsletter.