The first-ever survey of its kind, produced by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and partners, focuses on issues such as the ability to protect oneself and having sufficient time to evacuate before a potential disaster. It also asks questions about knowledge, awareness and participation in disaster management plans at national and local level.

“The survey will focus on a major blind spot in disaster management, the needs of the one billion or more people estimated to live with some form of disability,” said the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström. We can expect that as many as 30 million people living with a disability are affected during an average year by earthquakes and weather-related hazards.

According to UNISDR, this is the first survey of its kind and the data gathered could help Governments and international organizations put in place preparedness policies aiming to protect persons with disabilities during disasters.

“This survey has the potential to provide a very revealing insight into how we can reduce disaster risk for people living with disabilities which can then be included in the new global agreement on disaster risk reduction which will be in place by 2015,” Wahlström said.

The survey results will be announced on International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction which is marked each year on October 13. In a news release, UNISDR said it is working closely with UN Enable, the Disability-inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction Network for Asia and the Pacific and other partners on implementing the survey.

Findings from the review, published in the medical journal The Lancet, indicate that children with disabilities are 3.7 times more likely those without disabilities to be victims of any sort of violence. They are also 3.6 times more likely to be victims of physical violence, and 2.9 times more likely to be victims of sexual violence.

Children with disability associated with mental illness or intellectual impairments appear to be among the most vulnerable, with 4.6 times the risk of sexual violence compared with their peers who do not have disabilities.

“The results of this review prove that children with disabilities are disproportionately vulnerable to violence, and their needs have been neglected for far too long,” noted the Director of WHO’s Department of Violence and Injury Prevention and Disability, Etienne Krug, in a news release on the review.

“We know that specific strategies exist to prevent violence and mitigate its consequences. We now need to determine if these also work for children with disabilities. An agenda needs to be set for action,” added Dr. Krug.

Some of the factors which place children with disabilities at higher risk of violence include stigma, discrimination, and ignorance about disability, as well as a lack of social support for those who care for them.

Placing children with disabilities in institutions also increases their vulnerability to violence, according to the review, which provides the strongest available evidence on violence against children with disabilities.

The 17 studies included in the review reflect data from 18,374 children with disabilities from high-income countries – Finland, France, Israel, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States – underscoring the urgent need for high-quality research in low-income and middle-income countries.

“The impact of a child’s disability on their quality of life is very much dependent on the way other individuals treat them,” stressed Mark Bellis, Director of the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University, a WHO Collaborating Centre for Violence Prevention, and lead researcher on the review. “It is the duty of government and civil society to ensure that such victimization is exposed and prevented,” he added.

Certain nurse home visiting programmes for children at risk of violence and training to improve parenting skills have been shown to work to prevent violence against non-disabled children. These and other measures outlined in WHO’s Preventing child maltreatment and Violence prevention: the evidence should be implemented for children with disabilities, and their effectiveness evaluated, stated the news release.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which seeks to ensure that persons with disabilities enjoy the same human rights as everyone else, stipulates that children with disabilities should be protected against all forms of discrimination, and that they should have access to education, health services and protection from violence.

The agency also stressed the need to provide these children with access to all the services they need to grow up healthy and live up to their potential.

“Children living with disabilities continue to be the most excluded among all groups of children in Africa. Only a small portion of them are in school, and far fewer receive the adequate inclusive education they need,” said the Chief of UNICEF’s Disability Unit, Rosangela Berman Bieler.

The Day of the African Child is marked on 16 June each year to honour the memory of school children killed in 1976 during a demonstration in Soweto, South Africa, to protest inferior education by the apartheid administration and to demand lessons in their own language. The Day also draws attention to the lives of African children today.

The theme for this year’s observance is “The rights of children with disabilities: The duty to protect, respect, promote and fulfil.”

According to UNICEF, data suggests that between 5 and 10 per cent of all children in Africa grow up with disabilities. The main causes of disability include genetic disorders, complications during birth, diseases such as measles and meningitis, inadequate prenatal and neonatal health care services and inadequate diet leading to stunting.

So far, 25 out of 55 African countries have not yet ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the landmark 2006 treaty that seeks to ensure that persons with disabilities enjoy the same human rights as everyone else.

The Convention stipulates that children with disabilities should be protected against all forms of discrimination, and that they should have access to education, health services and protection from violence.

School enrolment among children with disabilities is much lower than among other children, UNICEF states in a news release. A 2011 study carried out by the agency in Madagascar found that on average only 11 per cent of children with disabilities attended primary school, with school attendance among girls much lower.

“Their learning achievements are often worse than those of other children, because schools are not designed to cater for them and teachers are often not adequately trained,” said the agency.

Several African countries introduced specific legislation, national policies or strategies to respond to the needs of children with disabilities. Rwanda is one of the countries that invested significantly in specialized education for children with disabilities. The number of children benefiting from special education there increased from 632 in 2000 to around 17,000 in 2010.

UNICEF is supporting the development of national frameworks for inclusive education in a number of African countries, which includes the training of teachers and the development of adequate learning materials and facilities.

It is also supporting concrete interventions for children with disabilities, including through the distribution of textbooks in Braille for children with visual impairment in Zimbabwe.