Challenges to implementing Inclusive Education also arise in the humanitarian sector. Many of these mirror the challenges in education systems more broadly in that children with disabilities remain largely unseen in humanitarian responses. There are significant ongoing crises in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan for example, as well as climate induced emergencies (flooding, droughts), which are creating large numbers of children and adults with disabilities. Prolonged hunger, psychological trauma (affecting child development), bombs and drones, along with displacement from home communities, and the collapse of health and rehabilitation services, increase the prevalence and severity of impairments. Entire education systems may be disrupted by damage or destruction of infrastructure or the need to repurpose buildings.
This creates large scale loss of learning across whole communities and populations. Even if schools reopen, damaged infrastructure can lack accessibility, leading to high drop-out rates and low enrolment amongst children with disabilities. Having a higher prevalence of disability amongst children and teaching staff during such crises suggest that inclusion should be built into crisis responses. Yet disability and trauma are not seen as central to reconstruction planning discussions. This was illustrated recently at the Global Disability Summit in 2025 where there were only 21 commitments (2.5%) focused on conflict and crisis interventions. Moreover, accelerated learning programmes, which are a popular intervention in post crisis situations, are designed without consideration of impairments and they continue to be implemented with only limited data on how they impact learning in children with disabilities.
In refugee response situations, a lack of data from screening, along with a homogenised approach to disability more generally, means children with disabilities go unnoticed. Children with disabilities miss out on inaccessible mainstream interventions aimed at children in general, with most disability specific interventions designed for adults. Refugee camps and camp infrastructure often have significant environmental barriers (for example hilly and muddy terrain prone to flooding). Temporary school structures may have poor access to classrooms and sanitation facilities, and class sizes may at times exceed 100 children. For girls with disabilities there may be added vulnerabilities and safeguarding considerations which make caregivers reluctant to enrol them.
Lots of post-crisis disability focused interventions are focused on Assistive Technology (AT), the provision of learning material and teacher education. These are important, but such one-off, ad hoc inputs do not create inclusive classrooms. There is still very little evidence on the impact of AT on learning for children with disabilities, especially over time and when it happens without addressing the systemic need for reforms in schools.
There is opportunity here though. Refugee camps offer the chance to set up interim arrangements like resource rooms or buddying up teachers with support staff and learning assistants to help manage large class sizes and inaccessible classrooms. More can be done to utilise home-school liaison staff to work with families on reducing stigma and encouraging positive parenting techniques. The reduced proximity of camps can expedite greater integration of services between health, education and social protection, for example, and Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE) can be easily integrated with disability assessment units if there is sufficient expertise and political will. Innovations like play-based therapy for children experiencing trauma is also useful for children who are non-verbal and for working with parents or children who don’t speak local languages.
The key message here is that the lack of embedded disability expertise in education system response planning means Inclusive Education does not feature in discussions at a high enough level. This is compounded by the fact that education itself is not regarded as a priority generally in humanitarian situations because it is not seen as life-saving. The lack of Inclusive Education expertise at the core of programme design, implementation, and evaluations means interventions tend to be ad hoc, one-off actions created in response to specific demands rather than being systemic.