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Ukraine hopes to rebuild as a model of a free, fair and inclusive society once it emerges from the conflict, and whether the rights of people with disabilities are respected will be a major test of its success, write Virginia Atkinson and Yulia Satsyuk.
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Air raid sirens ring out every day across Ukraine, signaling a part of everyday life for Ukrainians as they rush down stairs to basements or walk miles to reach shelters or take refuge, as millions have done.
But people with disabilities who cannot hear these signals, access bomb shelters, or cross borders or reach shelters continue to be left behind.
One woman’s family was all visually impaired and had no idea where the entrance to the basement of their apartment was.
When the building owner instructed residents to take shelter there, their requests for directions were ignored.
This is just one example of the inaccessibility of shelters to people with disabilities: In 2023, the Ministry of Interior of Ukraine found that nearly 900 of more than 4,800 shelters were locked or in disrepair. The majority of the remaining shelters are inaccessible to people with disabilities.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, President Volodymyr Zelensky promoted his Ukrainian peace plan and called on allies to remain committed to “building, rebuilding and restoring life” in Ukraine.
As Ukrainian cities are now rebuilding, it is important to recognise that there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for people with disabilities to survive and recover from war.
For Ukraine to prevail and thrive as an inclusive democracy, we must prioritize those who are currently left behind.
The situation became more serious with Russia’s full-scale invasion.
We should not wait for the fighting to end before we can make the country work for our growing disabled population.
According to estimates by the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, the Ukrainian population with disabilities is approximately 2.7 million, but this number is underreported due to prejudice and discrimination against self-reporting. A survey conducted in 2020 by the Ukrainian disability rights NGO Fight for Right and the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that 16.8% of Ukrainians have disabilities, and the number is increasing daily during the conflict.
Prior to the full-scale invasion, Ukraine had begun to reform social services to promote self-reliance and take a more rights-based approach to disability.
The government adopted a Barrier-Free Society Strategy for 2021, which focuses on “ensuring that persons with disabilities can fully participate in society and enjoy their fundamental rights.”
But those efforts came to a screeching halt when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The information conveyed to the public included important information such as curfews, evacuation locations, and martial law guidelines.
Oleksandr, who is visually impaired, had little access to information during the first months of the invasion and could not even find out where to buy bread, due to a lack of resources in sign language, large font or audio-visual formats.
Some of those fleeing have left behind loved ones, including the elderly and disabled. Amnesty International reports that 4,000 elderly Ukrainians with disabilities have been forced into state care homes.
As the Washington Post noted in a damning report on internally displaced Ukrainians with disabilities, many of these facilities are located in remote areas and violate international standards on access to independent decision-making for people with disabilities.
Children with disabilities are struggling to keep up with school lessons, and their families are given little support.
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Even if they make it to the border, there’s no guarantee they’ll be able to cross: Fight for Right estimates that thousands of men with disabilities have been denied crossing.
Although conscription regulations state that persons with disabilities are not subject to conscription, border patrols are not sensitive to disabilities and often turn persons away without providing any information about the documents required to cross the border.
Support from international stakeholders needed
The challenges faced by people with disabilities during the war are indicative of the challenges Ukraine will face during the reconstruction period.
The number of disabled people has already skyrocketed during the war, many of them wounded soldiers. According to a recent Associated Press report, wounded veterans need to be given the resources to navigate the world on their own.
For many soldiers, children and adults, wounded and unwounded alike, the trauma of witnessing these atrocities will undoubtedly affect their lifelong mental and emotional health.
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For Ukraine to thrive as an inclusive democracy, the international community must prioritize identifying solutions to these problems.
The upcoming Ukraine Reconstruction Conference in Berlin will be an opportunity to draw attention to ensuring that people with disabilities are meaningfully involved in Ukraine’s reconstruction and reform.
Buildings should be rebuilt in an accessible manner, institutions should be decommissioned and strategies should be adopted to enable people with disabilities to live independently in their communities, new laws and policies developed as part of the EU accession process should be in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and elections held when martial law is lifted should be accessible to disabled voters.
Many of the applicable amenities are things we already use in our daily lives, such as speech-to-text software on our mobile phones or ramps that make buildings more accessible to people with disabilities or parents with small children.
Democracy is at risk
We at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) and Fight for Right are committed to doing our part.
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Ahead of Ukraine’s 2020 local elections, the IFES team supported the Central Election Commission and organizations for people with disabilities to design QR codes that would allow people with a smartphone to access written content in Ukrainian Sign Language and audio format.
This voter education outreach method was awarded an Innovative Practice Award by the UN Project Zero in Vienna, and it can be done the same for any other potentially life-saving information.
As Ukraine returns to normal democratic life, we will continue to work with our Ukrainian partners to ensure that these standards are reflected in elections and that all Ukrainians have the opportunity to participate in the political process.
The international community has recognized since the full-scale invasion began that it is democracy that is at stake.
The hope is that once Ukraine emerges from the conflict it will be able to rebuild as a model of a free, fair and inclusive society.
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Ensuring that the rights of people with disabilities are respected will be a litmus test to gauge how successful it is.
Virginia Atkinson is a global inclusion advisor at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, and Yulia Satyuk is head of the NGO Fight for Rights in Ukraine.
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