Promoting the rights of Children with disabilities innocenti digest no

disability in conflict and emergency situations
Conflict, civil unrest and natural disaster represent 
significant causes of childhood impairments – 
as well as barriers to supporting children with 
disabilities in these situations, for example among 
refugees and internally displaced populations. 
Children with disabilities are especially vulnerable 
in emergency situations. They are often the first 
to be abandoned by families and usually the last to 
receive emergency relief and support.
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A disability 
perspective is rarely present in assessments 
from the early stages of an emergency, and it is 
also possible that, under pressure, humanitarian 
care workers revert to segregating persons with 
disabilities and even accommodating them only by 
impairment category, as happened in the Freetown 
amputee camp in Sierra Leone. 
Children and adolescents may be separated from 
their families for long periods, with devastating 

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Innocenti Digest No. 13
Promoting the Rights of Children with Disabilities
long-term psychological consequences. Even 
the most caring of parents will be torn between 
remaining with their disabled child at a special 
facility and returning home to meet the needs of all 
their other children.
Children in war zones run a greatly increased risk 
of being injured and disabled by landmines and 
unexploded cluster munitions, in African countries 
such as Angola (see box 5.2), in Cambodia and 
other South-East Asian countries, in South-Eastern 
Europe and in the Middle East. Children may be out 
playing in the fields or running errands through the 
woods and they often cannot read warning signs. 
Many children were born after fighting ended, so 
have no memory of where mines might have been 
laid. Children who cannot understand warnings are