By Morgen Makombo Sikwila
Women and children affected by armed conflicts are exposed to increased levels of traumatic experiences, which include direct exposure to violence, disruption of family structure, and social disintegration.
Many people are affected by displacement, including prolonged confinement to refugee camps. This is even worse for children with disabilities.
Children with disabilities often face increased risk of harm during armed conflict and crises. The United Nations and governments around the world need to urgently ensure protection and assistance for children with disabilities in these circumstances.
Armed conflict takes a devastating toll on children with disabilities, yet governments and the UN have not done nearly enough to protect them. Governments, the UN Security Council, UN agencies, and aid groups should urgently step up efforts to protect and assist children with disabilities as part of their commitments toward children affected by hostilities. Children with disabilities are often at greater risk during attacks, including risks of abandonment. Their families can face a split-second decisions, either to flee only with family members who can flee easily, or to remain behind to provide support. Children with physical disabilities struggle to flee without assistance and assistive devices such as wheelchairs, prostheses, crutches, or hearing aids. Children who have visual, hearing, developmental, or intellectual disabilities may not hear, know about, or understand what is happening.
Children with disabilities can experience disruptions to education, lack access to services, lack access to potable water and sanitation; humanitarian assistance, and face lasting psychological scars. Conflict can worsen poverty for them and their families, affecting their ability to meet basic needs, let alone get assistive devices or rehabilitation.
The disruption of education during conflict and crises places a high burden on children with disabilities. Government forces and armed groups may attack, occupy, and destroy schools. Remaining options for schooling may be inaccessible or difficult to flee in case of attack. Children with disabilities are more likely to be out of school and without access to education provided by humanitarian organizations, which may have limited options for inclusive programs and lack trained staff. Education for students with disabilities becomes a luxury. Only those who can run go to school.
For children with disabilities, lack of access to support and services and education exacerbates conflict’s impact on mental health. Trauma caused by armed conflict and a lack of subsequent mental health support can harm a child’s development and life trajectory.
Governments and militaries in war situations should develop specific protections for persons with disabilities during the conduct of hostilities and undertake disability-inclusive programming in humanitarian action. Governments, the UN Security Council, and United Nations agencies and other bodies should increase the existing efforting to monitoring, reporting, and responding to child rights violations in armed conflict include children with disabilities. Together with humanitarian organizations, they should also improve humanitarian coordination and assistance so that children with disabilities have access to nutrition, health care, education, assistive devices, and psychosocial support.
Bold commitments and targeted action are needed to protect children with disabilities, who have largely been forgotten.
Children with disabilities can be at a higher risk during armed attacks without assistance or assistive devices or because they can’t hear or don’t know that an attack is happening. Children who are unable to flee independently and do not have someone to support them are being left behind. Ever witnessed children in refugee camps who could have escaped hostilities with their families?
Children with disabilities are at a higher risk of being unable to reach a school and being left out of formal education and educational services provided by humanitarian organizations. For children with physical disabilities, barriers can include inaccessible roads, inaccessible sanitary facilities, inaccessible school facilities, and lack of assistive devices. Attacks on schools interfere with access to school for all children, including children with disabilities. Schools might be characterized by unsafe infrastructure, including absent walls, roofs, staircases, windows, or heating, as well as severe overcrowding. Governments should ensure education for children with disabilities on an equal basis provided in the context of armed conflict.
Many children might not afford basic necessities, such as food and health care, and especially struggled to be provided items such as assistive devices or diapers for older children, as well as rehabilitation or other therapies. Lack of access to nutrition and health care can exacerbate existing disabilities. Many people who in the some camps, including children with disabilities, may die from malnutrition, respiratory illnesses, and other diseases. Lack of female health workers and female trained professionals limit access to rehabilitative services for girls with disabilities.
Conflict-related deterioration of infrastructure, health care, and other services because of the use of explosive weapons in areas with civilian populations, has a disproportionate impact on children and adults with disabilities. People with disabilities experience problems in getting services due to physical barriers, lack of security, and economic and social discrimination. Increased prices of medications and denial of humanitarian assistance are also of serious concerns. Denial of humanitarian access creates chronic health conditions, especially among children, such as malnutrition. This is one of the primary reasons why many children acquire disabilities.
Sites for internally displaced people or refugees are often not accessible. Children may need to crawl or drag themselves in unsanitary conditions to reach latrines. Uneven terrain in camps for displaced people make navigation dangerous or impossible for children who are blind or who use assistive devices to move around.
Children with physical and sensory disabilities in many cases cannot get adequate prosthetic or assistive devices. A prosthetic leg would help a lot. It will help to manoeuvre without having to ask other people for help. It will help emotionally.
If children have access to assistive devices, they are often not tailored or appropriate for their needs.
Security forces may destroy and loot from homes. People with disabilities often lose everything, including their assistive devices, accessible homes, and livelihoods.
Children living in conflict and crises zones are at high risk of depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions. Some children can present signs of psychological distress, anxiety, sadness, extreme agitation, or frequent troubled sleeping. Lack of access to support and services and education exacerbates conflict’s impact on mental health.
Even if they cannot hear the gunshots when their communities are under attack, children with disabilities feel them. They feel the panic, they see the terror in the eyes of their families trying to escape to safety. Some of these children develop trouble sleeping, and they cannot concentrate or do their homework.
In some cases in war torn countries, whenever there are airstrikes, the children with disabilities become terrified, and start yelling and try to run for shelters. Whenever there is something unexpected, even if someone rushes into the house, some children starts to panic.
UN Security Council supports projects that focus on increasing children’s with disabilities participation in decision-making, promotion of disabilities perspectives in policy development, strengthening the protection of children with disabilities affected by conflict, countering conflict-related violence, amplifying calls for accountability and advancing the status of people with disabilities in post-conflict settings. However, more needs to be done to empower children with disabilities. Children with disabilities must begin to play a significant and major part in peace talks and post-conflict reconstruction and they should be empowered to take a stand against conflicts.
Morgen Makombo Sikwila
MSc Peace and Governance
BSc Counselling
Diploma in Environmental Health
Certificate in Marketing Management
email address: morgensikwilam@gmail.com
Phone Number:0772823282
