Beyond emergency gaps: Rethinking disability in crisis

When Malak Majed fled her hometown of Kherbet Selem in the south with her extended family amidst intensifying airstrikes in October 2024, the already stressful journey north to Beirut was compounded by another factor: she and her two brothers were all wheelchair users.

And the country’s emergency infrastructure had not been built with them in mind.

Crowded together with three other families in an inaccessible public van, Majed described the five-hour drive while bombs fell nearby as “terrifying.”

“There was no food, no water, no solution.”

Once in Beirut, the obstacles continued to mount. The city’s schools refused to house her family, citing “too many disabled members.” With renewed strikes in Dahiyeh forcing yet another displacement, Majed’s family continued north to Tripoli, where they were placed in the ground-floor cafeteria of a school that had been converted into a shelter with four other families.

“The room was completely empty,” Majed said. “No mattresses and no blankets.”

As harrowing as Majed’s journey was, her experience with Lebanon’s inaccessible emergency response mechanisms would soon repeat itself.

Only one and a half years later, in the early hours of March 2, 2026, Majed was forced to flee again.

As Israeli strikes hit Dahiyeh, she left her home at 2 a.m. and made her way to Beirut’s waterfront in Raouché, where she waited on the street for her parents to arrive from the south. Within hours, the family relocated to the Islamic Orphanage in Aramoun, one of a limited number of centers equipped to receive displaced persons with disabilities.

While the center was comparatively accessible, particularly in its bathrooms and showers, the insecurity persisted, as Aramoun was struck days later.

“We hope to find another, safer place to stay,” she said.

Seven weeks into the war, Majed and her family remain displaced in Aramoun, among the 141,600 Lebanese now living in one of the country’s 690 shelters, according to the latest government data. While these figures indicate that 2,865 displaced persons with disabilities are living in shelters, disability rights activists interviewed say the majority remain outside official shelters, staying with relatives or in informal settings that are rarely equipped to meet their needs.

Such instances underscore vulnerabilities that have been building for years. Within the past decade, the 2020 Beirut port explosion, the 2024 war, and the most recent conflict with Israel have tested the country’s emergency systems. As those systems come under strain, a central question remains: who is built into the response, and who is left to navigate it alone?

For persons with disabilities, emergency response is not only about logistics. It is about access to information, mobility, medical care, and protection.

According to Fadi el Halabi, Executive Director at the Ecumenical Disability Advocacy Network (EDAN), crises in Lebanon have slowed progress across nearly every sector. With the government consumed by a “draining security issue,” long-delayed reforms within the disability rights landscape often struggle for sustained attention.

“The main problem is not being able to accumulate momentum,” said Sylavana Lakkis, president of the Lebanese Union for People with Physical Disabilities (LUPD).

“Every time we have a catastrophe, persons with disabilities pay the price.”

The legal framework: Promise and paralysis

To understand why these gaps persist, it is necessary to look beyond the immediate emergencies and toward the laws meant to govern them. Until strong legislation and a commitment to implementation take hold, persons with disabilities will face the same recurring risks.

Despite repeated crises exposing preparedness gaps, Lebanon is not without legislation. Law 220/2000 established the country’s first legal framework for disability rights and was once considered pioneering in the region. Yet nearly a quarter century later, many of its promises remain unfulfilled. As explained by el Halabi, two core weaknesses continue to undercut its impact: its outdated definition of disability and a lack of enforcement for most of its provisions.

Even as disability advocacy has transformed globally, Law 220 still upholds an outdated “medical model” that frames disability as an individual impairment. This contrasts with the “social model” enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which Lebanon ratified in June 2025 after years of delay. Under the CPRD’s approach, disability results from the interaction between persons with impairments and social barriers that hinder their full participation in society.

Disability advocates are clear in their assessment: now that Lebanon has joined the CRPD, Law 220 must be amended to align with its standards.

The law’s narrow classification also contributes to distorted statistics on the prevalence of disability in Lebanon. With a population of approximately 5.8 million, the Ministry of Social Affairs (MoSA)’s 2025–2026 strategy report stated that persons with disabilities represent 4–6 percent of the population (232,000–348,000). Estimates from the World Bank and the World Health Organization, however, place the figure much higher, at 10–15 percent (580,000–870,000). This discrepancy stems partly from the ministry’s limited definition, which excludes psychosocial, learning, and other non-visible disabilities.

It is difficult to legislate rights for a subset of a population when the very criteria for inclusion are themselves contested.

This classification gap directly limits access for persons with disabilities. Under Lebanese law, eligible individuals may obtain a disability card issued by the MoSA. Yet according to the same 2025–2026 strategy report, only 127,000 persons with disabilities are registered under the MoSA. This is a far cry from the hundreds of thousands who likely meet international definitions of disability.

As explained by Ibrahim Abdallah, member of the National Council on Disability in Lebanon, the low enrollment reflects restrictive eligibility criteria, limited incentives, and repeated failures to uphold the card’s promised benefits.

“Particularly for those who might not want to acknowledge their disabilities due to cultural stigma, the effort to obtain the card is rarely deemed worthwhile,” he said.

Policy shifts in motion

With years of stalled reform, it is easy to become disillusioned at the state’s inaction. But Lebanon has not been without pockets of progress.

One notable policy initiative has been the National Disability Allowance, which was introduced in 2023. Providing $40 per month to eligible disability card holders, the program has expanded in age coverage and now reaches around 22,000 beneficiaries.

For many persons with disabilities economic support is vital. In conversations, activists repeatedly cited Lebanon’s staggering 83 percent unemployment rate among persons with disabilities. This is magnitudes higher than Lebanon’s most recent unemployment rate of 11.5% (2023). Such economic exclusion leaves many already on the brink long before any emergency begins.

“While limited, the NDA is significant, as it marks the first time the state has dealt directly with persons with disabilities rather than through intermediary institutions,” Lakkis said.  

2026 has brought its own breakthroughs. On February 26, the Council of Ministers approved the National Strategy for Persons with Disabilities. A public statement from the MoSA characterized the initiative as one that “places the rights of persons with disabilities at the heart of public policies.”

According to el Halabi, this step represents “a very important milestone that needs to be translated later on through concrete action.” The strategy is a start, implementation will be the test.

From crisis to crisis

Even with these recent reforms, the same gaps re-emerged as the war escalated in March 2026.

In the first days of displacement, families fled overnight with little guidance on where to go. Shelters opened rapidly across the country, but many filled within hours, often before accessibility could be assessed, a pattern Abdallah said left little room to prioritize persons with disabilities.

On the government side, the Ministry of Social Affairs has announced a series of emergency measures in the weeks since the war began aimed at supporting persons with disabilities. These have included extending the validity of disability cards through mid-April to preserve access to healthcare, and launching a one-time $100 cash assistance program for displaced families with members with disabilities, initially targeting 3,000 families and later expanded to reach around 9,000 families, or roughly 36,000 individuals. The ministry also began registering displaced persons through official links in early March and said it has focused on securing and equipping specialized shelter centers.

While the state has sought to strengthen and scale its response, disability rights activists cautioned that support for persons with disabilities remained fragmented, with incomplete data and uneven outreach, leaving large numbers outside the system altogether.

“There is more awareness,” el Halabi said. “But it is not systematic.”

“The displacement was huge, and the response came after it had already begun.”

In response to the growing gaps, the Emergency Taskforce for Persons with Disabilities, first established during the 2024 war, reactivated within days.

Abdallah, one of its organizers, explained the taskforce has evolved from an ad hoc coordination effort into a network of more than 30 organizations, including OPDs, NGOs, and UN agencies.

Since the start of the 2026 war, the group has met almost daily, working to map accessible shelters, coordinate services with actors such as the Red Cross and UN agencies, and source assistive devices. But the scale of need continues to outpace available resources.

“Our resources are not enough,” Abdallah said. “The needs are much bigger.”

The limits of shelter

At a school-turned-shelter in Dekwaneh, the challenges of displacement for persons with disabilities do not end at arrival.

In one ground-floor room, Zeina, a four-year-old girl with cerebral palsy, struggles to eat the food distributed in the shelter. Her family arrived on the first day of the war from Dahiyeh, her father explained, once again displaced to the same room they occupied during the 2024 war.

Because Zeina can only consume a liquid diet, most of the food provided is inedible. To manage, her family has begun preparing soup inside the room. But with limited income and rising costs, the long-term solution remains unclear.

“We won’t have any food soon,” her father said.

One floor above, thirty-year-old Hussein, who is paralyzed and requires full-time care, must be carried up and down the stairs by family members, as the school has no elevator and the toilets are not accessible. His older brother Hisham, who has an intellectual disability, also depends on family support. Although the family used to receive money from the brothers’ MoSA-issued disability cards, payments have ceased since the war began. With limited income, compounded by disruptions to services, access to the brothers’ medication has become increasingly difficult.

While a group of EU- and MoSA-supported aid organizations visited the shelter several weeks earlier and focused on persons with disabilities, little follow-up has been provided.

“Aid groups tend to help the younger kids more,” Fatima, who shares the room, said. “We’re still waiting.”

Across the shelter, interviews with seven persons with disabilities and their families revealed three recurring problems: food is often unsuitable for those with specific dietary or medical needs, stairs limit mobility, and toilets remain inaccessible.

For Malak Majed, these conditions mirror her own experience across both waves of displacement.

When asked what was most urgently needed, Majed said persons with disabilities require protection and preparation the government has failed to provide. Accessible transportation and shelter are essential, she insisted, especially since crowded rooms pose serious risks for those with mobility or respiratory challenges like her asthma.

“We can’t sleep like other people,” Majed said. “We can’t use the same toilets. The conditions in public schools were not prepared for us.”

Towards inclusive preparedness

Lebanon cannot build an inclusive society while continuing to treat disability rights as a crisis-driven afterthought. As the past two wars have shown, the country still lacks a unified, rights-based framework to safeguard persons with disabilities.

“To ensure real change, the country needs a strong law, then adequate resources, and then political decision,” el Halabi said. 

“A coherent framework requires coordination among civil society, international partners and the state, not the fragmented responses that have marked past crises,” he added. The task ahead involves turning these emerging frameworks into lasting safeguards before the next crisis arrives.