ARCHIVED

Individual Commitment

• What led your organization to make the commitment?

  IDE works to bridge the gap between persons with disabilities and service providers facing disasters including:
  1) Pre-disaster preparedness and mitigation
  2) Rescue and relief in the context of disaster
  3) Post-disaster rehabilitation, reconstruction and recovery
  
  Not much focus nor attention has been on abuse including sex exploitation among victims or even service providers with disabilities. Communication and cultural (especially those who are deaf) barriers are the largest reason for such abuse or exploitation. This is an area where IDE very much wants to spend additional focus on as part of its training and education opportunities.

• Achievements at a glance

  IDE has partnered with several organizations including World Deaf Federation (WFD) and International Disability Alliance (IAD) to perform additional analysis and research on reported sexual and abuse exploitation crimes on victims or providers with disabilities during and post disasters. IDE has also secured a grant from the Disability Rights Fund that led to the development of the New National Federation of the Deaf as well as a few local deaf organizations to provide training and awareness of this issue. Victims need an outlet to communicate incidents or to receive assistance to emergency or aid workers.

• How is your organization assessing progress

  In mitigation of the recent murders of three deaf women in Haiti, IDE collaborated with a few local organizations to bring attention to this incident across various social media channels. There were organized street protests as a result of this collaboration including a push for local government involvement. Unfortunately, the murders remain unsolved and IDE plans to provide a response to this situation in hopes to bring extra attention to this ongoing problem.
  
  Additionally, IDE has requested updates from participating partners that focus on similar crimes at least twice a year and plans to perform additional research as resources permit.

• Challenges faced in implementation

  It is difficult to obtain law enforcement and/or legal reports of such incidents especially in countries that may not have a robust support system in place. Secondly, there is a lack of interpreter resources which makes it difficult for victims to report to police as well as public services including hospitals, psychological services, and other anti-sexual abuse services. There are very limited interpreting services in third world countries such as Haiti and there isn't enough training services in that area. There just isn't a market in these countries for professional sign language interpreting services.

• Next step to advance implementation in 2017

  Continue to gather data and develop training modules for inclusion to various IDE training programs into a knowledge-base that is highly accessible to other humanitarian organizations for ongoing awareness of this need. IDE could provide interpreter-focused training which could alleviate this problem in partnership with organizations like the World Association of Sign Language Interpreters (WASLI).

• If you had one message for the annual report on what is most needed to advance the transformation 'Take concrete steps to improve compliance and accountability', what would it be

  Establishing a strong governance process that touches on little-focused areas such as disaster victim or service worker sexual abuse or exploitation is necessary through an improved information sharing platform.

• Cross cutting issues

  ☑Disability ☑ Gender ☑ Humanitarian principles

• Specific initiatives

  ☑Charter on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action

• Other related Agenda for Humanity transformations

  ☑2A - Respect and protect civilians and civilian objects in the conduct of hostilities ☑ 3D - Empower and protect women and girls ☑ 3G - Address other groups or minorities in crisis settings