Neglected casualties: Mental health harms of armed conflict on persons with disabilities

Abstract

In armed conflict and other situations of armed violence, people with disabilities, both children and adults, face serious and unique threats to their mental health and psychosocial well-being, including due to being targeted because of their disability, their inability to flee attacks, risk of abandonment, breakdown of services, and lack of access to health care and assistive devices. Unequal access to the sparse mental health services and education that may exist during conflicts exacerbates mental health impacts, and children with disabilities experience multiple and intersecting forms of mental health harms based on their disability and age. Since 2015, Human Rights Watch has documented the mental health harms of armed conflict and armed violence on people with disabilities in Afghanistan, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Palestine, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen. While international mental and psychosocial support services standards call for inclusion and accessible services for all, people with disabilities are often the last to get support – this is especially true in cases of people with intellectual, psychosocial or hearing disabilities due to physical, communication and attitudinal barriers. There is an urgent need for governments, humanitarian donors and humanitarian agencies to change how they provide mental health and psychosocial support services in order to ensure that they are accessible to all.