When cyclones, floods, or droughts hit Southern Africa, the damage is never shared equally. Some people can pack up, evacuate, and access emergency food. Others cannot.
Persons with disabilities are among the first to be left behind — and among the last to be reached. This is not because disasters are indiscriminate. It is because most disaster risk reduction (DRR) systems were not designed with them in mind.
This article sets out why disability-inclusive disaster risk reduction matters, what the evidence says, and what it requires in practice.
The Numbers Are Hard to Ignore
About 15 per cent of the world’s population lives with some form of disability. In Southern Africa, poverty, limited healthcare, and conflict push that figure higher in many communities.
What is striking is not just the size of this population, but their exposure to harm. Research consistently shows that persons with disabilities are:
- more likely to live in hazard-prone areas, such as floodplains and informal settlements;
- less likely to receive early warnings, especially when systems rely on sirens, radio, or text-only alerts;
- less able to evacuate quickly, particularly those with physical, sensory, or cognitive impairments;
- less likely to receive food, water, or medical assistance at emergency shelters; and
- more likely to experience violence and abuse in displacement settings.
These are not random outcomes. They are the predictable result of systems that were built without disabled people at the table.
“Disasters do not discriminate. But disaster systems do.”
Why DRR Systems Still Miss the Mark
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–2030) is the global blueprint for reducing disaster losses. It explicitly calls for disability-inclusive approaches. So does the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
Yet the gap between policy and practice remains wide.
Across Southern Africa, disaster risk management plans are often prepared by national and district governments with little input from disabled persons’ organisations. Early warning systems are rarely designed with sensory accessibility in mind. Evacuation routes frequently assume that everyone can walk, run, or drive.
Community-based DRR programmes often use participatory methods — community mapping, risk assessments, scenario planning — but these exercises regularly exclude people who cannot attend meetings, who communicate differently, or who are hidden from view because their families have not disclosed their disability.
The result is a system that, in an emergency, performs exactly as it was designed: it serves those it was designed for and misses everyone else.
What Disability-Inclusive DRR Actually Requires
Inclusion in disaster risk reduction is not a special add-on. It is a design principle that must run through the entire DRR cycle — from risk assessment and early warning to emergency response and recovery.
Here is what that looks like in practice.
1. Disaggregated data collection. You cannot plan for people you cannot see. Risk assessments must include data on the number, location, and types of disability in a community. Without this, evacuation plans and resource allocation will systematically overlook disabled people.
2. Accessible early warning. Early warning systems must reach everyone. This means SMS alerts alongside sirens, visual signals alongside audio announcements, and community volunteers trained to reach households where people with disabilities live.
3. Inclusive evacuation planning. Evacuation plans must account for people who need assistance to move. Personal emergency evacuation plans, pre-identified community helpers, and accessible transport are basic requirements — not luxuries.
4. Accessible shelters and services. Emergency shelters must be physically accessible. Sanitation facilities, food distribution points, and health services must be designed to accommodate wheelchair users, people with visual impairments, and people with mental health conditions.
5. Meaningful participation. Disabled persons’ organisations must be included in DRR planning processes — not consulted after the fact, but involved from the beginning. Their knowledge of local risk, local barriers, and local solutions is irreplaceable.
6. Disability-sensitive recovery. Recovery is often where the deepest exclusion happens. Rebuilding programmes that do not factor in accessibility often recreate the same barriers that existed before the disaster. Inclusive recovery means ensuring that disabled people are neither left out of livelihood support nor housed in inaccessible structures.
The Evidence from Our Research
At Zonge Research International, disability-inclusive development is one of our core research themes. Our researchers have worked across Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Zambia on questions of how disability intersects with health systems, community development, and social protection.
One consistent finding stands out: disabled people are rarely absent from disaster-prone communities. They are absent from the systems meant to protect those communities.
A study on health system responsiveness to children with disabilities in Malawi found that many children with disabilities — and their families — were effectively invisible to community health programmes. Their needs were not in the data. They were not in the plans.
Similar patterns appear in our work on community rehabilitation. Families caring for disabled relatives in rural areas often have no contact with disaster management structures. They receive no tailored information, no pre-positioned assistance, and no inclusion in community planning meetings.
This is not a failure of goodwill. It is a failure of system design.
“Disabled people are rarely absent from disaster-prone communities. They are absent from the systems meant to protect those communities.”
The Role of Chiefs, Communities, and Local Leaders
In Malawi, as in much of Southern Africa, traditional leaders play a central role in community life. They mediate access to land and resources, convene community meetings, and coordinate responses to local crises.
Research on chiefs’ perspectives on disability inclusion — including a 2023 Master’s study conducted by a researcher affiliated with Zonge Research International — found that chiefs often held deep awareness of disability in their communities. They knew which households had disabled members. They were aware of the barriers those families faced.
What was missing was structured support. Chiefs did not have DRR training that centred disability. They had no clear mandate to ensure that disabled community members were included in risk reduction planning. And they often lacked the resources to act on what they already knew.
This points to an opportunity. Local leaders can be powerful agents of disability-inclusive DRR — if they are trained, resourced, and given a mandate to act. Investing in them is not a shortcut. It is a strategy.
What Needs to Change
The good news is that disability-inclusive DRR is achievable. It does not require entirely new systems. It requires existing systems to be redesigned with inclusion as a baseline expectation, not an afterthought.
At the policy level, SADC member states must move beyond ratifying the CRPD and the Sendai Framework to ensuring that national DRR legislation and plans are aligned with them. Disability-disaggregated data must become a standard requirement in national risk assessments.
At the programme level, humanitarian and development organisations must audit their DRR programmes for accessibility and inclusion. Are early warning systems accessible? Are shelters accessible? Are disabled people represented in planning committees? These are not hard questions. They are ones that should already have answers.
At the community level, disabled persons’ organisations must be funded and supported to participate in local DRR structures. Their involvement is not a tokenistic gesture. It is the fastest way to get systems right.
No One Should Be Left Behind
The phrase “leave no one behind” appears in every major development framework of the last decade. It is in the SDGs. It is in the Sendai Framework. It is in the African Union’s Agenda 2063.
But words in frameworks do not protect people from floods, cyclones, or droughts. Systems do.
Disability-inclusive disaster risk reduction is not a niche concern. It is a test of whether our systems mean what they say. When the next disaster strikes — and it will — the question is not whether it will be fair. The question is whether we designed our systems well enough that no one gets left behind.
At Zonge Research International, this is the question we are committed to helping our partners answer.
