South Sudan’s humanitarian response unfolds amid protracted conflict, flooding, droughts, displacement, and limited resources. Humanitarian actors in South Sudan have made progress in recognising disability as an important theme in protection programming and coordination.
Progress is evident: International and local NGOs, alongside organisations of persons with disabilities (OPDs) and UN agencies, are adapting delivery modalities to embed disability inclusion. Disability-focused organisations are leading improvements in physical accessibility and expanding rehabilitation and protection services.
Meanwhile, the protection cluster and Inter-Cluster Coordination Group (ICCG) are integrating disability inclusion more systematically into coordination. Despite these encouraging trends, the systematic integration of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Guidelines on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action recommendations and its four ‘must-do’ actions has remained a work in progress. A grim funding outlook heightens the challenges. Although uneven progress has been made with fewer resources, advancing inclusion requires sustained investment in capacity and in adjusted delivery modalities.
Too often, disability is framed as an add-on rather than a cross-cutting priority; competing needs and limited budgets reinforce a narrative of constraint, and intersection with other concerns pushes disability to the margins of broader plans. Data gaps persist across clusters. Even where the Washington Group Short Set of Questions is used to collect disability inclusive data, analysis rarely disaggregates by gender, age, and type of functional difficulty, limiting targeted action—especially in hard-to-reach areas such as Pibor. Knowledge and capacity constraints compound this: while disability-focused organisations like Humanity & Inclusion (formerly known as Handicap International), CBM Christian Blind Mission, Light for the World, and Voluntary Organisation for International Cooperation are well-versed in the IASC Guidelines, many actors are not, due to high staff turnover and one-off trainings.
