Since the outbreak of the war in Yemen in 2015, all parties to the conflict across Yemen have committed violations of international humanitarian and international human rights laws in the absence of accountability of authorities. Civilians have suffered from various harms, including the catastrophic effects of explosive weapons, and Yemen has become known as the worst - Man-made - humanitarian crisis - in the world.
The war continues to leave its deep cracks which led to exacerbating the suffering of Yemenis, leaving millions of hungry, sick and amputees with disabilities as one of the most affected groups by this conflict which shows no signs of discontinuing after seven years since its eruption in March of 2015.
According to a study issued by Mwatana Organization for Human Rights, the number of civilian casualties of the war whose cases could be verified during 2021 reached 8,796 dead and 9,865 injured whereas there are ten thousand children killed or injured in Yemen since the beginning of the war, an average of four children per day. Since 2018, landmines, IEDs and unexploded ordnance have killed and injured at least 1,424 civilians, most of whom are children. Additionally, the war has resulted in the displacement of more than 4 million people; about 73 percent of them are children and women.
However, prior to the outbreak of the conflict, the number of persons with disabilities in Yemen was estimated at about three million, and these people became among those in need of humanitarian assistance during the conflict, and their conditions were exacerbated by the increasing difficulties in accessing services. Besides, the damage to infrastructure facilities, which forces some of them to live in displacement environments that lack the minimum necessities of life and protection. Moreover, the conflict led to the suspension of the activities of more than 300 local non-governmental organizations that were providing specialized services for persons with disabilities in the fields of health care, training and rehabilitation, and the imposition of more restrictions on international non-governmental organizations concerned with persons with disabilities.
Disability becomes a source of renewed and aggravated suffering, especially when it occurs in the context of protracted conflict, in an extremely fragile community environment, unable to meet basic and special needs
Facilities for people with disabilities have been targeted by parties to the conflict; the most prominent of these is the Al-Noor Center for the Blind in Sana’a, which was subjected to an air raid carried out by the coalition aircraft led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE in January 2016.
Immobility
Further, the study found that the largest number of persons with disabilities who were interviewed are in dire need of an assistive device appropriate to the type of disability, especially lower limbs and self-propelled chairs.
Due to the lack of these tools, some had to use a metal crutch, which could be obtained for a rather cheap price, but of course it is not the ideal tool for restoring mobility.
The armed conflict disabled at least 6000 civilians, most of whom lost a limb due to an explosion, a mine or a gunshot, and the actual number is likely to be much higher.
The society of people with disabilities suffers from neglect even before the war, and this suffering has doubled and intensified afterwards, as many services that were available before were affected, and the war and the behavior of its parties also caused the emergence of a new society of people with disabilities. In this article, we will shed light on this new category, to highlight one of the forms of harm caused to civilians as a result of the use of explosive weapons by parties to the conflict in violation of international law.
Furthermore, the study also revealed the significant needs of this category including specialized psychological rehabilitation as an absolute necessity for persons with disabilities. Due to the difficulty of providing this service even in special ways, given the scarcity of centers that provide specialized mental health services, and the tyranny of a superficial and harmful popular culture, so that some resort to negative coping mechanisms for psychological safety, such as burning parts of the body with fire to relieve the effects of panic and psychological trauma caused by disability.
Imminent threats
Disability becomes a source of renewed and aggravated suffering, especially when it occurs in the context of protracted conflict, in an extremely fragile community environment, unable to meet basic and special needs.
Persons with disabilities, according to the research study that assessed the impact of disability, access difficulties and needs, based on documented field cases, suffer from bad psychological effects, ranging from shock feeling when a disability occurs, to falling prey to depression and frustration, and possibly having a fatal feeling of helplessness. The psychological effects vary relatively according to the type of disability; people who have had their lower limbs amputated have lost all ability to move, or have had double disabilities. Not to mention the social consequences, as disability is a living witness to the suffering of the surrounding community, which includes people with disabilities, especially in rural areas, where individual disability becomes an indication of an imminent and impending danger to the surrounding community as a whole.
For example, the impact of a person being disabled as a result of a mine explosion in the pasture near the village or near sources of drinking water (wells), is not limited to mere individual disability. Rather, it means depriving the village of basic sources of life and livelihood, and its residents sometimes have to search for alternative strategies for living. Such as displacement to safer places, or displacement for the second time if they were already residing in a displacement community.
Also, returnees from displacement are among the most vulnerable social groups to disabling injuries, due to the persistence of risk factors in their original environments to which they risked returning.
Moreover, there is an invisible social impact that may result from disability, and it is considered a huge cost. It occurs when the damages of individual disability - in rural areas - exceed the scope of the disabled person and his family, and become an indication of an imminent and pending danger to the surrounding village community as a whole, such as the disability caused by the explosion of a mine in a grazing area, or near the only water well in the village, here the surrounding community becomes restricted in movement and insecure, and may have to migrate it by searching for alternative livelihood and a safe life.
Likewise, families, including a person with a disability, incurred a high economic cost to access the life-saving health service, follow up on the health status of the victim, and provide for his needs. This resulted in the consumption of all or most of the family's savings, selling some of its property, or borrowing. However, some families were forced to remove persons with disabilities from hospitals before their health conditions stabilized as a result of the high medical expenses.
In terms of infrastructure, the war destroyed more than a third of the country’s educational facilities, about 40% of health facilities, housing assets, water, sanitation and hygiene assets, in addition to more than half of energy assets. Currently, there are about 15 million people, more than half of whom are children (8.5 million), lacking access to safe water, sanitation or hygiene.
Consequently, about 20.7 million people (more than 66% of the total population) need assistance and protection, including more than 12 million children. For at least two years, about 50,000 people in Hajjah, Amran and al-Jawf have been living in famine-like conditions, in addition to more than 5 million people in Yemen who are on the brink of likely famine.
Legal Definition and Dispute Tracks
According to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (which entered into force in May 2008), this category includes persons with long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments that prevent them from participating fully and effectively in society on an equal basis with others. This definition applies to all persons with disabilities, whether civilian or military, regardless of the causes of disability (congenital, emergency), and it also includes all types of disability in various circumstances.
There are preliminary indications of a relative discrepancy in the nature and level of the effects caused by disability, related to the type of disability and the gender of the person with disabilities. For example, women with disabilities tend to isolate and stay home to avoid stigmatization, while men with disabilities are reasonably indifferent towards derogatory expressions and descriptions.
Nonetheless, article 11 of the Convention states “to promote, protect and ensure the full enjoyment by persons with disabilities, on an equal basis with others, of all human rights and fundamental freedoms, and to boost respect for their inherent dignity.” It stressed the importance of the provision of special protection in times of conflict and natural disasters in accordance with obligations under international humanitarian and international human rights laws.
Regardless that Yemen is one of the 187 countries that ratified this convention in 2007, but the Yemeni law on the care and rehabilitation of the disabled was actually issued in December 1999; that is, before Yemen signed this agreement, but the Yemeni law still needs to be amended in line with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Thus, the study concluded that disability in the context of a protracted conflict results in profound and very bad psychological, social and economic effects. Instead of decreasing the severity of these effects over time, as occurs in normal conditions, the effects of disability worsen and become gloomier as the conflict continues. As a result, the societal environment becomes more fragile, unable to meet basic and special needs, in addition to being a non-guarantor of rights, and lacks mechanisms to provide protection for persons with disabilities who suffer from an increased sense of insecurity, and from the persistence of risk factors in environments of displacement and areas of confrontation.
There are also preliminary indications of a relative disparity in the nature and level of effects caused by disability that often related to the type of infirmity and the gender of the person with disabilities. For example, women with disabilities tend to be isolated and stay at home to avoid stigmatization, while men with disabilities are reasonably indifferent to degrading language and descriptions, in contrast to their high sensitivity to the economic effects of a disability as breadwinners. However, disabled women bear a greater social cost as a result of the exacerbation of the social inferiority of women with disabilities, and the movement restrictions that the family prefers to tighten, especially on disabled girls.
Difficulties of resistance
Disability is a reason for the slackening of social relations for people with disabilities, and limiting the ability to develop social ties due to the difficulties of movement, communication and exchange of visits, or as a result of some people with disabilities decision to withdraw as a negative reaction to the feeling of letting down by the surrounding community.
According to the study, people with disabilities in Yemen face serious challenges in accessing services, especially life-saving medical services, health care services, and social services, in addition to the difficulty of accessing humanitarian aid. Further, these difficulties are increasing in the countryside, in areas of displacement and areas close to confrontations. These difficulties can be due to natural obstacles (such as rough terrain and distances), or obstacles made by the parties to the conflict (such as blockades and road blocks), or from damage to infrastructure as a result of the war. In all cases, the difficulties of access have severe consequences for people with disabilities such as prolongation of life-threatening injury, and harmful delay in providing the required health care to the victim.
Despite the challenging conditions caused by the war, there is a clear positive return to efforts and interventions directed to persons with disabilities when they are provided in an appropriate manner; the fact that some persons with disabilities received various forms of support, such as obtaining appropriate prosthetic limbs, partially overcame the difficulties of movement, and the psychological support that was already obtained had very encouraging results.
However, despite the existence of remarkable examples of people who have challenged disabilities through their own efforts, they are significantly limited due to the conflict conditions that constantly undermine opportunities for resilience, in addition to the poor level of access to physical rehabilitation tools that aid movement, mobility and reintegration, and the challenge of disability is subjectively linked to the availability of a reasonable limit of the needs, including rehabilitation that stimulates the will to challenge impairment among people with disabilities.
