Disability in a Time of Climate Disaster

Last June, two districts in Bangladesh received record-breaking rainfall, a historic deluge that affected more than 7.2 million people, according to an estimate by the United Nations. When the U.N. stepped in to assist with relief efforts, it listed persons with disabilities among the groups first in line for assistance. Yet advocates at Harvard Law School report that a disability humanitarian relief effort they developed in collaboration with local disability rights advocates identified many aid recipients with disabilities that had been left out of other humanitarian efforts. Notably, thousands of people with disabilities likely failed to receive help promptly, in part because the country’s authorities had not adequately identified those with different needs before disaster struck.

This tragic story is doomed to be repeated if governments planning for the effects of climate change do not center persons with disabilities in their efforts, says Michael Ashley Stein ’88, a visiting professor of law at Harvard, and co-founder and executive director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability.

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