Disability inclusion has become a crucial issue for humanitarian action, at least at the international policy level. However, little is known about how humanitarian actors are “doing inclusion” in practice. With a case study on South Sudan, this article examines whether the increase in publications, policy tools and guidelines has made humanitarian action more inclusive for persons with disabilities, and how stakeholders can overcome persisting barriers for persons with disabilities. The article demonstrates noticeable progress in data collection, capacity-building, the removal of barriers and meaningful participation, but humanitarians still lack the skills, confidence and resources to address many persisting barriers. To advance inclusion, donors and humanitarian organizations must invest more time and resources in capacity-building and coordination.

The challenge faced by Somalia's newly established National Disability Agency (NDA), along with other emerging actors in the disability arena, is how to address the perception that disability is primarily a humanitarian issue in a country that not only is in conflict but also faces cyclical humanitarian crises. A further challenge for the NDA is how to ensure that the humanitarian architecture put in place facilitates non-discrimination, as well as the inclusion of and participation by persons with disabilities. While a typical humanitarian architecture can inadvertently reinforce an already stigmatizing charity or welfare approach towards persons with disabilities, Somalia's experience demonstrates that humanitarian actors can do a lot with leadership, a willingness to leave agency branding behind, and an active committed partner such as the NDA. Nevertheless, genuine inclusion in Somalia's overall State-building project needs also to be the remit of development, reconciliation and similar actors, with access to and participation of persons with disabilities guaranteed in their range of processes and frameworks.

Despite increasing awareness and high-level commitments on disability inclusion by humanitarian donors and actors, persons with disabilities continue to be ignored from humanitarian assistance. Rights and inclusion of persons with disabilities are a foreign policy priority for the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, including in humanitarian assistance. The primary means for donors, such as Finland, to promote disability-inclusive humanitarian action are funding and advocacy. Trade-offs between flexible and earmarked funding for disability inclusion are challenging when reporting on results is inadequate. This article shares examples on how the Ministry promotes inclusion of persons with disabilities in humanitarian action and explores challenges that need to be resolved by stakeholders.

Mental disorders have high prevalence for disability and almost 80% of the global burden occurs in low- and middle-income countries. The impacts of mental health conditions can affect many sectors of society and threaten peace, human rights and development. However, international law jurisprudence has not sufficiently developed to guide mental health governance. This paper reviews the international legal protections for people who experience mental health conditions, including mental disorders and psychosocial disabilities. It focuses on State application of legal instruments in particularly vulnerable contexts, namely, least developed countries and situations of armed conflict. It argues that relying on existing treaties and soft-law instruments from the health and human rights angles is inadequate, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is not the right fit. New hard- and soft-law instruments are urgently needed to meet positive obligations and safeguard rights in these vulnerable contexts. Some suggestions for the contents of future instruments are made.

Persons with disabilities are at higher risk of injury or death during an armed conflict, either as specific targets or through inability to protect themselves. Humanitarian responses concentrate on meeting the immediate basic needs of an average population. Yet historically, the situation of persons with disabilities during armed conflict, as well as peacebuilding processes, has been largely absent in the discussion at the Security Council. On 20 June 2019, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 2475. This groundbreaking text marks the first time the Council has dedicated an entire resolution to the situation of persons with disabilities in situations of armed conflict. The resolution has significantly raised the attention and understanding of the situation of persons with disabilities in the context of the armed conflict in the Security Council and beyond. This article details the process that led to Resolution 2475, as well as what has happened since.

The United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy establishes the first-ever framework for the United Nations system to advance disability inclusion across all pillars of the Organization's work, including the peace and security pillar, and to measure the progress made across the system. Evidence reported since the launch of the Strategy in 2019 demonstrates that the Strategy has provided a clear impetus among United Nations entities and peace operations working in the sector to address the rights of persons with disabilities, who are among the most marginalized in any crisis-affected community. However, the evidence also reveals that while humanitarian entities have made progress since the launch of the Strategy, disability inclusion remains an emerging area of work for peace operations in the field. The article argues that the Strategy's accountability framework has provided a much-needed blueprint and ability to monitor progress across the system, yet far more needs to be done to ensure that the United Nations system is equipped to respond to complex situations and reach the furthest behind first.

Academics rarely raise the need to consider persons with disabilities when preventing, investigating and prosecuting international humanitarian law (IHL) violations. Worse still, no actual attempts have been made to include a disability perspective into practical guidance and monitoring mechanisms. This article addresses that void by laying out how existing yet unutilized IHL obligations can be leveraged to repress and suppress disability-based IHL violations. In doing so, the article will detail how fact-finding approaches, criminal investigative processes and reporting methods for IHL violations can be inclusive of persons with disabilities and thus more appropriately address the endemic under-representation of a disability perspective in the planning and execution of military operations during armed conflict and the specific crimes they thereby suffer. Additionally, this article will articulate concrete changes that should be made to international criminal law procedures for prosecuting war crimes to provide recognition and accountability for disability-based IHL violations, as has been done for violations against women and children. Finally, this article will diagnose the state of the law to address any legal challenges or hurdles that may hamper the inclusion of a disability perspective in fulfilling the IHL obligation to reduce and address violations of humanitarian law.

This paper presents an inexhaustive but thorough review of the evidence of violence against persons with disabilities that came before, or ought to have been known to, the prosecutors of the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. This research demonstrates that despite significant and compelling evidence from investigators, journalists and witnesses, gross violations against persons with disabilities were largely ignored by the prosecution or treated merely as aggravating factors at sentencing. These crimes could instead have been characterized as an “other inhumane act” prosecutable as a crime against humanity, which would have emphasized the gravity of the crimes, provided recognition of the victims’ suffering, imposed criminal sanctions on those responsible, and unequivocally condemned violence against persons with disabilities during armed conflict.

Despite the fact that persons with disabilities comprise, according to current statistics, a significant portion of conflict-affected communities and are disproportionately affected by armed conflict, the lack of inclusion in accountability mechanisms for acts amounting to crimes under international law is notable. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) provides a framework for mainstreaming inclusive investigation practices and promoting greater accountability, through application of the principles of autonomy, non-discrimination and accessibility. This article makes suggestions for the operationalization of this CRPD framework through specific recommendations for accountability mechanisms, alongside legal opportunities for recognition of crimes affecting persons with disabilities and crimes resulting in disability. A case study of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and persons with disabilities in Iraq is used to illustrate the application of recommendations to ensure that persons with disabilities are no longer the “forgotten victims of armed conflict”.

This article examines how women and girls with disabilities who are survivors of sexual and gender-based violence crimes have a right to access justice under Article 13 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). It explains how the right to access justice requires States to actively address gender and disability stigmas and discriminations that create barriers within justice systems, and how the failure to do so violates the CRPD. Further, the author argues that when a State fails to eliminate such barriers post-armed conflict, the International Criminal Court may then exercise jurisdiction over these crimes in order to raise awareness of crimes against women and girls with disabilities, strengthen domestic justice systems by pressuring States to investigate and prosecute these crimes, and act as a court of last resort for crimes against women and girls with disabilities.

• • International Committee of the Red Cross, “How Law Protects Persons with Disabilities in Armed Conflict”, 13 December 2017, available at: www.icrc.org/en/document/how-law-protects-persons-disabilities-armed-conflict (all internet references were accessed in November 2022).

• • International Committee of the Red Cross, “Chapter 3: Needs of the Civilian Population in Increasingly Long Conflicts: Selected Issues”, in International Humanitarian Law and the Challenges of Contemporary Armed Conflicts: Recommitting to Protection in Armed Conflict on the 70th Anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, 2019, available at: www.icrc.org/sites/default/files/document/file_list/challenges-report_the-needs-of-civilians-in-increasingly-long-conflicts.pdf.

• • 33rd International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, “Addressing Mental and Psychosocial Needs of People Affected by Armed Conflicts, Natural Disasters and Other Emergencies”, Resolution 33IC/19/R2, Geneva, Switzerland, 9–12 December 2019, available at: https://pscentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/solution.pdf.

• • Council of Delegates of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, “International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement Policy on Addressing Mental Health and Psychosocial Needs”, Resolution CD/19/R5, Geneva, Switzerland, 8 December 2019, available at: https://pscentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/CD19-R5-Adopted-MHPSS-need-policy-draft-resolution-FINAL-EN_clean.pdf.

• • 33rd International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, “Bringing IHL Home: A Road Map for Better National Implementation of International Humanitarian Law”, Resolution 33IC/19/R1, Geneva, Switzerland, 9–12 December 2019, available at: https://rcrcconference.org/app/uploads/2019/12/33IC-R1-Bringing-IHL-home_CLEAN_ADOPTED_FINAL-171219.pdf.