Category: Uncategorized

  • Flores earthquake shelters shut out people with disabilities

    Flores earthquake shelters shut out people with disabilities

    The Indonesian Society for Disaster Management has published its sixth situation report on the earthquake and tsunami that struck Flores and the surrounding area. The damage it lists runs to 502 educational facilities, 396 houses of worship, 504 office buildings and 78 separate stretches of road. Indonesia’s Ministry of Health recorded 5,931 cases of acute respiratory infection across the affected districts. Medicine stocks in East Manggarai were running low.

    The report also covers a coordination meeting held on 22 August by the sub-cluster responsible for protecting older people, people with disabilities and other at-risk groups. Its first discussion was about the centralised sites set up to shelter displaced people, and how inaccessible they are. Many people with disabilities had stayed close to their own homes in tents they put up themselves, or gone to host families instead. The sub-cluster asked for rapid inclusion assessments run by organisations of people with disabilities, to establish who needs assistive devices and adapted hygiene items. It also warned that some people injured in the earthquake may now have a disability and appear in no record at all. The roads are damaged. Some of the injured have not reached a health service.

    This is the pattern we keep seeing. There is rarely any plan to evacuate people with disabilities, so they are left where they are while everyone able-bodied gets themselves out. The relief that follows is concentrated at centralised sites, and the people who could not travel to one are not registered there, not assessed there and not counted there. Whether they are found at all comes down to the luck of a search team reaching the right house. Without credit on a phone they can’t call for help, and no aid reaches them. Nobody will ever know how many people were left with a life-changing injury by this earthquake, because being counted depends on being found first. Our applications are screened with the Washington Group disability questions, which produce data comparable across countries and events, so reaching people and counting them are the same job. We believe that giving people with disabilities free phone credit before a disaster, for use in everyday life, means survival when the worst happens.

    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.

    Sources

  • Moldova’s refugee accommodation centres fall from 56 to 11

    Moldova’s refugee accommodation centres fall from 56 to 11

    UNHCR’s July 2026 operational update for Moldova reports that the network of refugee accommodation centres has shrunk from 56 in 2023 to 11 as of 22 July 2026. Two more are closing, and nine are expected to stay open. There are now 145,803 refugees from Ukraine in Moldova, nearly 13,000 more than a year earlier. UNHCR says many refugees have reached greater stability, while those with acute vulnerabilities still struggle to meet basic needs and to reach care and support services.

    At the end of July the remaining centres accommodated 628 refugees with significant care and support needs. Twelve per cent of them are people with disabilities, alongside older people at 33 per cent and children at 30 per cent. UNHCR says many of these residents need daily help with mobility, personal care, medication management or supervision. Getting people on Temporary Protection into Moldova’s national care services will be critical for anyone with longer-term care needs, the update says.

    A person with a disability doesn’t stop needing a working phone once the danger has passed. As the centres close and support moves online, the phone is what someone runs their life through — booking medical appointments, following an asylum claim, banking and looking for work. For many people with disabilities the phone is the assistive device itself: translation apps in a language they don’t speak, sight apps such as Be My Eyes, screen readers and speech-to-text. None of it works without data. We believe free credit, for use in everyday life, is what keeps someone reachable when the in-person support they relied on has gone.

    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.

    Sources

  • Bangladesh’s floods have affected 1.28 million people since July

    Bangladesh’s floods have affected 1.28 million people since July

    Flash floods and landslides have hit south-eastern Bangladesh since 5 July, and an estimated 1.28 million people have been affected. More than 436,000 of them need humanitarian assistance. Homes, roads, water and sanitation facilities and farmland were damaged. All of that comes from a rapid gender analysis published on 30 July by the Gender in Humanitarian Action Working Group for Asia Pacific.

    The analysis found that women, girls and people with disabilities have been affected more than others. They face higher barriers to reaching safety and essential services. The same is true of humanitarian assistance and of the chances to recover afterwards. The report also says they are carrying more caregiving and household work than before.

    This is what we keep seeing when water rises fast. The warning rarely arrives as an official message. It spreads through weather sites, social media and messages from neighbours and community groups, and all of that needs data on a phone. Someone with no credit is outside every one of those channels. There is almost never a plan to evacuate people with disabilities, so everyone able to leave goes and the people who cannot are left where they are. That is not a choice they made; they stayed because nobody came for them. Afterwards they are stuck in the ruins of their homes, cut off from relief that concentrates at centralised aid points they cannot travel to, and reliant on the luck of a search team reaching the right house. Without credit on a phone they cannot call for help. We believe that giving people with disabilities free phone credit before a disaster, for use in everyday life, means survival when the worst happens.

    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.

    Sources

  • Aid for people with disabilities is now called non-essential

    Aid for people with disabilities is now called non-essential

    The Protection Cluster has published an analytical note by HelpAge International on what this year’s funding cuts are doing to older people and people with disabilities. Its finding is blunt. When donor money contracts, the specialised programmes built for these two groups are frequently among the first to be scaled back or categorised as non-essential. The note looks at Ukraine and Ethiopia, and draws on interviews and focus group discussions with 12 local Older People’s Associations and Organisations of Persons with Disabilities.

    In Ukraine, around 26 per cent of the population is aged 60 or older, which is why the note calls it the world’s oldest humanitarian crisis. A large share of people there have specific protection, health and mobility needs. Those are exactly the needs the cuts fall on. In Ethiopia the note looked at Older People’s Associations working inside a protracted emergency, and found funding constraints biting into locally led protection work. Across both countries the evidence runs the same way: as targeted support is withdrawn, protection risks rise for the people already most at risk.

    A cut to a budget is a cut to people. Staff are the most expensive thing a large aid organisation runs, so the first thing a shrinking budget removes is the caseworker. That is the person employed to go into camps and settlements and find people with disabilities. Recruiting that worker costs money. So does training, insuring and housing them, on top of a salary — all before a single person with a disability has been identified and assessed and finally supported. A top-up sent digitally to a phone needs no caseworker and no salaries, and the person makes the call themselves. What is left when the funded programmes go is not nothing. It is the neighbours and the small local associations this note is built on, and we believe credit on a phone is how someone with a disability reaches 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.

    Sources

  • Forty per cent in Poland’s collective sites have a disability

    Forty per cent in Poland’s collective sites have a disability

    The International Organization for Migration surveyed 195 refugees from Ukraine living in collective accommodation in two regions of southern Poland, and found that 40 per cent reported holding a disability certificate. More than half had an older person in the household. Only 22 per cent were in work, and around 80 per cent of those in work still needed extra financial support on top of their income. IOM collected the data in Podkarpackie in April and May 2025, and in Małopolskie in October and November 2025, shortly after the rules changed on social support for Ukrainians under Temporary Protection.

    Sixty-eight per cent of respondents said they were not ready to live independently, and among those aged 65 or over that rose to 87 per cent. Income was the main barrier across every age group. Health came a close second, and it weighed heaviest on middle-aged and older respondents, who were also the ones least likely to cite income. IOM found health problems were a major reason people were still in collective accommodation after a long time. Just under a third had accessed any psychological support, and those who attended support groups reported better well-being and better handling of stress.

    A person with a disability doesn’t stop needing a working phone once the danger is behind them. In a host country like Poland the phone is what they run their life through, and often it isn’t a way of communicating at all — it’s the assistive device itself. Translation apps in a language they don’t speak, sight apps such as Be My Eyes, screen readers, speech-to-text: none of it works without data on the phone. Moving out of a collective site into independent living means doing more of it through a handset. That’s booking a medical appointment, following the progress of a protection claim, banking and studying, all online. It’s finding work too, and remote work is often the only realistic option for someone whose disability limits how far they can travel. As in-person support is cut back, more of that lands online. The people who most needed a person in the room are the ones now expected to manage all of it from a phone they may have no credit on. We believe free credit on that phone, for use in everyday life, is what makes independent living real rather than something on a form.

    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.

    Sources

  • Displaced people in Lebanon get little notice of shelter closures

    Displaced people in Lebanon get little notice of shelter closures

    UNFPA published its latest situation report on the Lebanon crisis on 31 August 2026, covering the month to 8 August. On 6 August, 25,503 people were still displaced across 242 collective shelters, 53 per cent of them women and girls. They told UNFPA they were getting limited information, and inadequate notice, about those shelters closing and about where else they could go. The agency says that raises the risk of people being displaced a second time.

    People with disabilities are named in the report among those facing the sharpest risks, alongside women and girls, adolescents and older people. It lists overcrowding, damaged housing, a lack of privacy and gender-based violence, plus financial hardship and barriers to essential services. Three hospitals and 27 primary health centres remain closed. UNFPA has 16 per cent of the US$25 million it appealed for, and says the shortfall limits how many people it can reach.

    Word that a shelter is closing rarely arrives as a letter. It moves between neighbours, through community groups and messaging apps, and out from whoever was standing nearby when it was said. Someone with a disability who can’t move easily around a crowded shelter, and has no credit on their phone, is outside all of that. We believe a phone that already works, used for everyday life, is what keeps a person inside those conversations. It’s also a line out that doesn’t run through anyone else — they can call an aid worker or a relative themselves.

    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.

    Sources

  • Rwanda’s share of highly vulnerable refugees has hit 76 percent

    Rwanda’s share of highly vulnerable refugees has hit 76 percent

    The World Food Programme published its Rwanda country brief in June. The share of refugees in the country classified as highly vulnerable rose to 76 percent in December 2025, up from 40 percent in mid-2024. WFP gives the cause in the next line: continued underfunding has forced reduced assistance to 50 percent since April 2025, increasing food and nutrition vulnerability as well as protection risks. It says it needs USD 13.1 million to sustain operations to November 2026, USD 10.2 million of that urgently, simply to keep food assistance running.

    The brief doesn’t count refugees with disabilities separately, so there’s no figure here for how many of that 76 percent they are. What it records instead is what changed around them. Assistance was halved, and WFP ties that directly to rising food and nutrition vulnerability and to rising protection risks, meaning the risk of violence, theft and exploitation. In the same brief, WFP describes standing ready to support Rwanda’s Ebola preparedness with logistics, telecommunications equipment and connectivity in border and remote areas.

    That figure measures the response, not the people. Nobody became more vulnerable as a person between mid-2024 and last December. The assistance was cut, so the count went up. Less on the ground doesn’t mean no help exists, though. The international agencies are still there, and so are the local organisations and the neighbours who bring food round or drive someone to a clinic. What goes is the person whose job was to come and find you. Large aid organisations pay caseworkers to go into camps and settlements and find refugees with disabilities. That worker has to be recruited, trained, insured and housed, all before a single person with a disability has been identified and supported. Staff are the expensive part, so staff are what a funding cut removes first. Credit on a phone costs no salary, and it puts a person with a disability on the calling end rather than waiting to be found. WFP counts connectivity as response infrastructure when it plans for its own operations, and we believe it is infrastructure for the person at the other end too.

    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.

    Sources

  • Over 27,200 of the 281,666 people UNHCR reached have a disability

    Over 27,200 of the 281,666 people UNHCR reached have a disability

    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.

    Sources

  • Disability got 0.1% of assignable aid, before the cuts began

    Disability got 0.1% of assignable aid, before the cuts began

    Humanity & Inclusion published a report on 17 June 2026 on what the sharpest contraction in international aid funding is doing to organisations run by people with disabilities. In 2023, before the cuts, disability-specific work received 0.1% of the government aid that can be assigned to a purpose. Around 40% of aid was never assessed for disability inclusion. In 2025 global Official Development Assistance fell 23.1% in real terms, with humanitarian aid down 35.8%.

    The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies published a case study on 4 June 2026 about cash assistance for children and adults with disabilities. It cites a UNHCR needs assessment from August 2023, which found that 26.4% of displaced people arriving in Bulgaria from Ukraine were identified as people with disabilities. The Bulgarian Red Cross used that finding to target its winter heating and clothing grants at Ukrainian households with at least one member living with a disability. It was one of three programmes counted as successful.

    Large aid organisations employ caseworkers to go into camps and settlements and find people with disabilities. That worker has to be recruited, trained, insured and paid before a single person with a disability has been found. When budgets shrink, staff go first, because people are the most expensive thing an organisation runs. So the visits stop. The help itself is still there — local groups, the neighbour who drives someone to a hospital appointment, the caseworker still at a desk in the same city. What goes is the ability to reach any of it. A top-up sent digitally to a phone number needs no caseworker and no salary, and the person with a disability makes the call themselves. We believe that matters more as the funding falls, not less.

    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.

    Sources

  • UN Women flags evacuation gaps after the Flores earthquake

    UN Women flags evacuation gaps after the Flores earthquake

    UN Women published a Gender Alert on 2 September on the 7.7-magnitude earthquake that struck Flores Island in East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, on 15 August. By 30 August the earthquake had killed 111 people, injured 1,629 and displaced 188,161 across eight districts. Nine hospitals and 68 community health centres were damaged. The alert was produced with Indonesia’s Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection, UNFPA and the Indonesia Humanitarian Coordination Platform.

    The alert says people with disabilities are a significant proportion of those affected. It identifies gaps in safe and inclusive evacuation facilities and heightened protection risks in the displacement settings, including gender-based violence and limited access to maternal and reproductive health services. It asks for that to change. Specifically it wants shelter, water and sanitation built so people with disabilities can use them, and it wants women’s organisations and people with disabilities involved in running the response.

    An earthquake isn’t a single event for a person with a disability. Where there’s no plan to evacuate them, everyone able-bodied leaves and they stay in their own home or its ruins. Nobody came for them, and staying wasn’t a decision they made. Afterwards they are isolated in a damaged area the health workers and assessment teams can’t get to, and cut off from relief that concentrates where people were able to travel. Credit on a phone keeps someone inside the conversations a warning travels through — the weather updates, the news, the messages from neighbours — and it lets them call for help getting out. It also lets a woman with a disability report violence in a displacement site without going through the person she’d be reporting. We believe that giving people with disabilities free phone credit before a disaster, for use in everyday life, means survival when the worst happens.

    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.

    Sources