ECW Executive Director Yasmine Sherif interacts with a young girl while she paints using her mouth. Credit: ECW/Estefania Jimenez Perez
By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI & BERLIN, Apr 3 2025 – Of the nearly 234 million children and adolescents of school age affected by crises, 85 million are already out of school. At least 20 percent of them—or 17 million—are children living with disabilities.
Compared to children without disabilities, children with disabilities are 49 percent more likely to have never attended school, per a recent UNICEF report. In times of crisis, girls and boys with disabilities also face heightened risks of abuse, violence, and exploitation, within and outside learning spaces. Emergencies and crises, and the way humanitarian interventions are designed and delivered, can compound the risks, barriers, and vulnerabilities faced by children and adolescents with disabilities.
“As we gather at the Global Disability Summit, Education Cannot Wait reaffirms its unwavering commitment to ensuring that children with disabilities are at the core of our efforts to leave no child behind in crisis settings,” said Yasmine Sherif, Executive Director of ECW.
“Together with our partners, we continue streamlining disability inclusion across our investments in education in emergencies and protracted crises while simultaneously supporting targeted interventions to overcome the specific barriers faced by girls and boys with disabilities in these contexts.”
“We need to bring children and adolescents, who were either born with disabilities or who were made disabled by brutal warfare, from the shadows to the light. They are the ones left absolutely furthest behind, especially in crisis situations. They need special help to return to school.”
These children include Zénabou, a 14-year-old girl from the Central African Republic who was born deaf and could not speak. She had never been to school. All that changed through ECW’s holistic education programme in the Central African Republic, specifically focusing on children with disabilities.
Zénabou received learning material, mobility aid, and special classes to learn Braille and sign language and was integrated into a network of community support for families around her and into the local school. Today, Zénabou never misses school if she can help it, can read and write and aspires to become a humanitarian development actor to help other children with disabilities. This is the story of another 150,000 children with disabilities receiving support through ECW’s programs.
Zénabou, a 14-year-old girl from the Central African Republic who was born deaf and could not speak. However, she has benefited from the ECW-partner holistic education programme in the Central African Republic, specifically focusing on children with disabilities. Credit: ECW
Sherif says while some, like Zénabou, were born with a disability, there are millions “of children whose disability was inflicted upon them through brutal conflict. Stepping on explosives, being bombed, having their limbs amputated and having their eyes shot out. Children are vulnerable and constantly on the front lines of conflict and crisis situations.”
Emphasizing that the world has the resources needed to respond to the special needs of all children with disabilities everywhere by providing much-needed resources to support specialized education, mobility, and learning devices such as Braille, wheelchairs, and hearing aids, and to build infrastructure in the school buildings such as ramps to facilitate movement.
“I have seen situations where, with the right support, the children are capable of turning a disability into another ability. I met a girl in Colombia with no arms. She was in a wheelchair and attending an art class. She had learned how to paint the most beautiful paintings by holding a pencil in her mouth. Children are resilient. We must keep their dreams alive by delivering their right to education,” Sherif emphasizes.
“I urge the global community not to forget these children. We must mobilize resources to give them the support they need to live a full life. Too much has already been taken away from them. They simply cannot be forgotten. In a world in so much turmoil and conflict, we cannot lose our humanity. If it affects someone else, it affects us too.”
ECW Executive Director Yasmine Sherif asked the donor community to provide the resources that can turn a child with a disability into a child with other abilities. Credit: ECW
As education systems buckle under the weight of multiple, complex difficulties, there is an unprecedented global challenge as nearly 240 million children are living with disabilities worldwide today. Within systems not designed to cater to their specific needs, many are denied the opportunity to benefit from the life-transformative power of quality, inclusive education.
As partners come together for the 2025 disability summit, ECW and the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) are calling on leaders worldwide to galvanize support for children living with disabilities in crisis settings and fragile contexts. Stressing that the power of education as a pathway toward peace and resilience cannot be underestimated.
Further highlighting that when access to quality education is more equitable, societies experience greater social cohesion and political stability, reducing negative cycles of displacement and continued armed conflict. That coordinated and impactful investments in inclusive education can lift up those left furthest behind and protect the rights of children living with disabilities in some of the most challenging circumstances worldwide.
Started in 2017, the Summit focuses on improving the lives of persons with disabilities, particularly in the Global South, and brings together global, regional, and national stakeholders who share a vision for disability-inclusive development and humanitarian action. This helps sustain a continuous cycle of advocacy and mobilization of the disability rights movement.
For children, the situation is dire for even when access to education is facilitated for children with disabilities, very few children complete their schooling education. UN statistics show children with disabilities are 16 percent less likely to read or be read to at home and 25 percent less likely to attend early childhood education.
To turn the situation around, ECW has committed to reaching 10 percent of children with disabilities across all its investments and programmes. The global Fund now calls on the global community, including governments, philanthropists, private donors, and individuals, to respond to an urgent call for financial support to reach all children with disabilities in fragile settings with lifelong learning and earning opportunities by raising the funds set aside for these children.
IPS UN Bureau Report,
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