Seoul – The International Organization for Migration (IOM) Mission in the Republic of Korea (ROK), with support from the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), hosted a webinar on Age and Disability Inclusion in Humanitarian Response on 6 October 2022.   

The webinar was attended by 57 ROK humanitarian professionals, including government officials, NGO personnel, and UN staff, as well as the general public.

Humanitarian crises impact all population groups. However, the elderly and individuals with disabilities are among the most at risk, often challenged by limited access to assistance and social protection.

Most of the difficulties they encounter are related to their mobility and access to social security services, including health care and insufficient sources of income. It is, therefore, essential to take the needs of the older people and the persons with disabilities into account during operations in response to humanitarian crises to ensure their rights to safe and dignified assistance are fulfilled.        

Kicking off with Marion Staunton, Global Humanitarian Protection, Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) Adviser of HelpAge International, the webinar offered intuitive knowledge on integrating aging and disability in humanitarian response by introducing key concepts and principles in the inclusion of the elderly and disabled in humanitarian interventions as well as relevant international standards.

Emphasizing on the importance of recognizing the rights and capabilities of the older people and persons with disabilities, the webinar also shared the needs to support advocacy, capacity-building and preparedness measures on aging and disability inclusion across the humanitarian system.

“In emergency response, older people and persons with disabilities are typically overlooked in favor of larger, more visible groups. They are rarely consulted and are often missed out when data and information are collected, so their needs are unknown. They became separate from their families, get physical disabilities, cut off from the services, suffer physical and psychological distress, have specific health and nutrition needs and remain at risk of abuse and neglect especially older women. Without knowledge, humanitarian work often relies on outdated assumptions about older people and persons with disabilities. Addressing older people’s and the person with disabilities needs is often considered an activity for specialist agencies or something to be done if extra time and resources are available. Emergency activities such as shelter, water supplies, toilets and health centers are rarely designed for older people and people with disabilities or limited mobility,” said Anwar.   

However, there are international standards like Humanitarian Inclusion Standards on older people and people with disabilities that support humanitarian actors in identifying needs and designing age and disability sensitive programs. Older persons and persons with disabilities are heterogenous group with specific personal needs but also diverse capacities that they can bring into the disaster response. The humanitarian actors need to involve older persons and persons with disabilities at level of the project cycle as important contributor and mitigate the risks that results in their vulnerability,” added Anwar.

Since 2014, IOM ROK has taken a vital role in providing a wide range of capacity-building support for ROK humanitarian actors with funding support from USAID-BHA.
 

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For more information, please contact Eunice Jieun KIM, IOM Republic of Korea Mission, Tel.: +82 70 4820 0291, Email: jikim@iom.int.