 Hello and welcome to the GBC webcast. My name is Mulham, and I am the communication officer for the GBC. We wanted to talk about including age, gender and disability in the HNO and HRP. And for today's webcast, we are going to be focusing only on one element, which is including disability in the HNO and HRP. To help me here, I have with me Kirsten Lang, who is the senior disability inclusion advisor with UNHCR. We're also joined by three panelists. I have with me Kopal Metra, who is joining us from New York today. Kopal is the program specialist on the children with disability at NSF. From Geneva, we have Kimberly Leit. She's the humanitarian affairs officer in the need and response analysis section of OTSHA. We also have with us Kareem Elvayar, who is the partnership manager at the Center for Humanity Data at OTSHA. We're also joined by our colleagues from the field, who are giving us their perspective on this topic. We have Pauline Treibler, who works for Humanity and Inclusion in Syria. And she is the technical advisor on data with Humanity and Inclusion. And we're also going to hear the cluster perspective on this. And we're joined by the cluster coordinator in Myanmar, Jalal Din Salduchi. She's joining us today from Yangoon in Myanmar. Welcome everyone and thank you so much for being here with us. I'm going to give the floor to Kopal to start with his presentation first. And I'm going to share also his presentation on the screen. Thank you, Molan. Thank you, Kirsten. And thank you, colleagues for joining today. It's great to be here. As was just introduced, the topic for today is how do we strengthen disability in HNOs, HRPs, and ensure inclusion of persons with disabilities in humanitarian action. I will essentially focus on what would a good HNO and HRP look like. But before I do that, let me briefly give you a flavor of why are we talking about this issue today. Let me take you to a couple of data points that we have on how many persons with disabilities are there in the world or within a certain population. So estimates suggest, and these are well established, that 15% of the population have some type of disability and which amounts to a figure of 1 billion people with disabilities in the world. So you have it on the slide and within that, we have figures of women with disabilities, one in 10 children have a disability. But what is most important for this discussion today is that in humanitarian situation, the figure is even higher because as we know, emergencies often result in more people with disabilities within the population. So figures suggest that about 20% and sometimes even higher of the population have a disability. So it's a huge number. And the next slide, so what is the situation? So once we dig a little deeper, we know that persons with disabilities are disproportionately affected in emergencies. At the same time, they remain one of the most excluded from humanitarian assistance. If you see persons with disabilities are 4 to 10 times more likely to experience violence. More than half of children with disabilities currently are out of school. At the same time, and in terms of livelihood, it is the same scenario. At the same time, studies suggest that more than 75% of persons with disabilities, according to a survey, do not or had difficulty or could not access humanitarian assistance. So the overall message is that the population is huge, 15 to 20%. And at the same time, while facing disproportionate risk, the current scenario is that they remain mostly excluded from humanitarian assistance. Now, all these factors have led to disability being, and the next slide, being a growing priority within the emerging as a growing priority. Now, why do I say that? If you see the Sustainable Development Goals, for the first time, it has explicit references to disability. More than seven targets and 11 indicators specifically referencing disability. The World Humanitarian Summit saw a lot of traction and momentum on disability, and a charter on inclusion of persons with disabilities was launched, which was widely endorsed. The Interagency Standing Committee has formed a task team to develop global guidelines on inclusion of persons with disabilities in humanitarian action. And if you have noticed, donors increasingly have started asking about how humanitarian action is reaching out to persons with disabilities in a systematic manner. And for example, DFID has a specific target on disability in their humanitarian investment program, which provides for resources and support to most of the key humanitarian agencies within the UN system. So there is a growing priority on the issue. Now, the next slide. I'll just take you briefly through what would a good humanitarian needs overview look like for persons with disabilities. And there are essentially three points there. First of all, any humanitarian needs overview, HNO, would be stronger in terms of inclusion if it gives an analysis of how the crisis differently affects persons with disabilities. We see a tendency of HNOs to include persons with disabilities and club them among a list of vulnerable groups, which is often not very helpful because the risks, the barriers are different. And without an analysis of who are at risk of what and why, it will be difficult to design an effective response. The second point that I would like to touch on is the identification of specific barriers that persons with disabilities face to access assistance and which in turn heightens their risk and vulnerability. So any good HNO would identify the specific barriers. And lastly, the consideration of intersectionality. How does other factors like age, gender, other contextual factors interact with disability and heighten risk and vulnerability. So these are essentially three points. If you are able to address, our HNO will be much more inclusive and stronger in terms of disability inclusion. And I'll now go to the last slide on humanitarian response plans, HRPs. What would a good HRP, disability inclusive HRP look like? And there are four points essentially I'd like to touch on briefly. The first point is, and that's the tendency again we have seen, rather than club disability or persons with disabilities among a host of groups to be prioritized, it would be much more useful if we list out the actions. What are the actions that would be taken to address the barriers that we spoke about in the last slide? How would the barriers be addressed to make the response more inclusive? And that is extremely important. The second point is to adopt a twin track approach. And the rationale behind it is that persons with disabilities are first and foremost people. They are part of the population and a majority of their needs are the same as any other person within the affected population. So in terms of their access to healthcare, access to water, access to food, at the same time people with disabilities will have some specific needs. For example, access to assistive devices, access to rehabilitation. So any comprehensive response would adopt a twin track approach in ensuring that the general assistance made available to the population is inclusive of and accessible to persons with disabilities. At the same time, there are some targeted interventions which specifically address the specific needs of persons with disabilities. The third point that I would like to highlight is the importance of adopting participatory approaches to consult persons with disabilities to include them in the planning and response. And with their lived experience, what we have seen is they are able to substantively contribute and make any planning and response much more richer. And the fourth point and the last one is the inclusion or considering to include disability and accessibility within the results framework at the output or at the activity level. And to provide some specific actions that could be taken to reach out to persons with disabilities during the crisis. So I'll end there and hand you over to Molam who will take you to the rest of the presentations today. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Kopal, for your presentation. I would like now to move to Kimberly. Kimberly, she's going to walk us through how disability included in the new HNO and HRB guidance. Kimberly, please go ahead. Kimberly, we can't hear you. Can you hear us, Kimberly? It does help if I take myself off you, doesn't it? It probably does. Welcome back. Thank you for that. And I said some very wise things, unfortunately, while I was on mute. I'm pretty sure you did. I feel like in order to best highlight the efforts underway this year to strengthen disability inclusion within the HPC process, we would benefit from knowing just a little bit about how the process has changed overall this year because these elements have provided some very useful entrees for strengthening the disability elements. So I'd like to point out five quickly differences or efforts to strengthen the HPC overall this year, which links very much to our discussion today. So historically, we've seen weak linkages between the humanitarian needs overview or the needs analysis and the subsequent programming within the HRP. So the revised process this year very much looks to address that and in fact is structured in a way that you cannot do your HRP unless you can show very clearly where the needs have been identified within the HNO. There's also a real effort to go beyond the sectoral focus and to strengthen joint intersectoral analysis to better understand the relationship between needs and to program accordingly. This is recognizing that rarely, if ever, would you meet an individual who has only a single sector or cluster need, only needs food or water or healthcare assistance. The third is an effort to increase the depth and breadth of analysis beyond the who, what and where to look more at the why and the when. What are the underlying risks and vulnerabilities that are contributing to current and future needs? And what are the capacities and coping mechanisms? What are those needs that are immediate and what are those needs that are chronic? And this particularly has opened up a very interesting area for us to look in greater depth at disability inclusion. We're also seeing within the HRP a shift at looking towards humanitarian outcomes, not just defining what we intend to do but the changes or the improvements in people's lives that we wish to see as a result of the efforts that we're dedicating. So we're looking for a shift in thinking there towards results and an accompanying strengthening of monitoring systems in order to look at that. Look at how the situation evolves, how the lives of people are evolving and the influence that the humanitarian initiative is having on that, if at all. So that's a quick overview. But what does that mean for us in our efforts towards strengthening disability inclusion? So what we've seen is within both the HNO and the HRP templates and I would say most notably the HNO is significantly increased visibility of where do we put disability within these documents. So we would often hear we have some information but where do we put it? It's now very clearly outlined within the document front and center of both the statistical elements and then also more of the narrative and some of the more analytical elements as well. We've restructured the way the analysis is presented so that not only is there a clear space to show quantitatively our estimates are known figures with related to disabilities. But also to look at some of the barriers and the capacities within some of the subsections where we're talking about critical problems related to physical and mental well-being, those related to protection and those related to resilience and recovery. So it offers us the opportunity to present the vulnerabilities as well as the capacities and the resilience of those with disabilities through different lenses in the document. Also within the step-by-step guidance there was an effort to clearly identify how this could be done. Not just where do we put it but what is the process or some of the thinking that we need to go through in order to arrive at these conclusions that would inform our programming. So from the outset of the entire HBC process we're saying that you need to start with the HC and the HGT reflecting a bit on what we already know. We have a tendency to start out from the beginning every year as if it's all new. What in fact we all know that we predominantly work in productive crises these days. There's a lot we do know already. So we're saying let's look at what we know. What do we already know about the needs that are ongoing? Those of persons with disabilities and the greater needs as well. What are their barriers? What are the vulnerabilities? And what can we look at to enhance resilience? What are we doing already and is it effective? At this time we're also asking that disabilities be considered within the scope and the focus, the boundaries that are being set for the forthcoming greater detailed analysis. It also highlights the importance of identifying the data indicators and other information that are required to answer these questions and the sources. As well as agreeing on agencies and clusters or sectors' roles and responsibilities. Now the new guidance on disability inclusion within the HNOs and the HRPs is particularly helpful because it also provides lists and information on existing data or data sources where information might be secured, some quantitative and qualitative information that could be utilized within the needs analysis process. Recognizing that while this data may not be fully complete it can give us an initial idea on which we may be able to subsequently build through securing other sources of information whether secondary or primary data collection. The step-by-step guide also highlights the need to ensure that disability considerations are included within the joint intersectoral analysis, as mentioned previously. So in analyzing the needs and the risks considering specifically how the impacts of the hazard affect persons with disabilities differently. Now I'd really like to point out that a strong analysis will aim to identify and describe the factors contributing to heightened risk rather than merely identifying the groups at risk or the risks themselves. And this is really a key element that will play into the HRP in programming. Because that will help us to define strategic objectives in a way that will promote both inclusivity and specific programming where it's adequate. Now as I noted as you flip through HNO and the HRP templates you'll see specific elements, specific points dedicated towards disability inclusion. And we'll also find links to additional guidance which can provide greater depth and specific detail as needed. And over to you. Thank you so much Kimberly. Now I'm moving to Karim El Bayar who is going to walk us through the importance of data on persons with disabilities. Karim over to you. Thanks very much. I'm just going to take one second to share my screen here. Sure go ahead. Okay so hopefully you can see my screen now. We can. Okay great. Well so thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to the group today. My name is Karim El Bayar as we mentioned and I'm with OCHA's Humanitarian Data Exchange or the Center for Humanitarian Data. The Humanitarian Data Exchange launched in July of 2014 and is dedicated to increasing the use and impact of data in humanitarian response. And of course that includes disability data which is the subject that we're talking about today. And since our launch in 2014 we have grown to include now almost 9000 data sets from 248 locations and over 1100 sources. So we're really pleased with the growth and increasing use of the Humanitarian Data Exchange by humanitarian organizations around the world. On HDX or the Humanitarian Data Exchange you can find country pages like the one you're seeing here. This is the country page for South Sudan that brings together a number of key statistics and data sets from more than 30 organizations as you can see here. They're made available for humanitarian workers to use in the ways that they see fit. We can also find organization pages like this one here for the World Food Program which is what you're looking at now is their global food prices database and we have this interactive map here where you can click on various countries and you can actually download the database to see food prices changing over time. We also have for the very first time this year and we're very pleased with this. All of the humanitarian needs overview. So all of the HNOs for 2019 are now to be found on HDX and you can see all of the data that informs the HNOs. As we are now moving toward a new system of HNOs and HRP's humanitarian response plans that include disability data. We're hoping to see disability data start to come in to the platform to humanitarian data exchange for the first time. We are as part of that work rolling out something that we're calling a data completeness grid and you can see that here for Somalia. We now have a data completeness grid up and running for 13 countries but we hope to have it up and running for all of the countries in which OSHA is operational by the end of this year. And you can see that what we're trying to do is to make it very clear what key data sets are required in order to improve humanitarian response and respond effectively and efficiently to the needs of affected people. And so what we're doing is making it very clear what data sets are available and what data sets are missing for each country. And then we make it very easy to click through and find those data sets. So what can you do once the data is actually online? There's a lot that can be done and in fact what we're trying to do is to create this marketplace where humanitarian organizations can view each other's data, can combine their data in ways that we haven't thought of, and can think about how to improve their operations. But there's also some interesting applications that you can use once you've got all the data in one location. This is an example from a page that we built for the Rohingya refugee response. And what you can see here is an interactive map. It's layering a satellite image that was acquired from a private sector provider along with mapping data that came in for the refugee camp that was done by an NGO. And then location information for various humanitarian assistance. So you can see that we've layered the location of schools, we've layered the location of medical clinics, nutrition services, women-friendly spaces. All of that came from different organizations. But by putting all of this together on one page, you allow decision makers and beneficiaries to see more clearly what their needs are. If there are camps where there are missing resources or there are camps where there are too many resources for the people that are there, and it helps to make allocation decisions more effectively and more efficiently. And so that's really just a small example of the kind of thing that can be done once you make data more available. We're now making a big push to acquire onto the platform on the Humanitarian Data Exchange more disability data. And I'm very pleased that one of the organizations we'll be hearing from later today, Humanity and Inclusion, or formerly Handicap International, has just launched their page on the Humanitarian Data Exchange. And they're making available some very interesting data sets. So here you see that their new page and some of the data that is made available, and some of the interactive mapping that HI has made available for the wider humanitarian community. So you can see here, this is demographic and disability information about Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon who have disabilities. And so this is very powerful information and very useful information that all of us in the humanitarian community can rely on to make our response more effective and more efficient. Excuse me. So we're really making a big push for disability data, and we'd love for organizations that are working with disability data to come onto the platform. There's a number of resources and support that we can provide. In addition to support with data visualization, there's also some tools that you can make available, or tools that are available rather on HDX that can be used by organizations that share their data there. And here's a very quick sort of view of some of them. We have a data check tool. We have a quick chart tool that allows you to create live interactive charts from your data very quickly. And really, as I mentioned, we'd like to see as much humanitarian data as possible, as much disability data as possible onto the platform so that it can be combined with other data sources made available to decision makers, made available to other humanitarian organizations, and hopefully make humanitarian response more effective, more efficient, and more responsive to the needs of all affected people, including affected people with disabilities. So we'd be very pleased to work with any organization that wants to come onto the platform and wants to learn more about how to share their data. I don't have enough time to touch on this today, but we also have a fairly robust data policy program in which we are helping organizations to remove sensitive or personally identifiable information before they share it, so we can help organizations think through some of the implications of sharing their data as well. And we'd be very happy to field any questions or support any organization that needs it. You can contact us at centerhumdata.un.org. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Karim. And thank you again to Kimberly and Kopal. I'm going to move now to our colleagues from the field and I'm going to start with Pauline. Pauline, please go ahead. Yes, I'm going to share my screen as well. Are you able to see it? Excellent, thank you very much. Thank you very much for having me today. I'm going to be talking to you about a project that Humanity and Inclusion have been implementing on collecting disability data in humanitarian action. It was a three-year project that was implemented. It was composed of an action research that we did in Jordan and Syria, the Philippine NDRC, to test and assess a tool called the Washington Group question to collect data in person with disability. We use the result of our action research to create learning materials designed for humanitarian actions on the use of the Washington Group question. And we've also been doing a lot of dissemination and advocacy to kind of create a consensus around collection of data on person with disability. So today I'm going to kind of talk you through the key findings from the project. So first of all, when we talk about disability data in humanitarian context, depending on the objective and the intervention, it can mean different things. It can mean data to determine who's in need of medical services, for example. It can mean data to determine who is at risk of exclusion or retroactive participation. It can be data on accessible facility. It can be data on barriers. It can be a lot of different things. And data can also be collected differently. It can be collected quantitatively or qualitatively. When we talk about disability data as well, it's important to remember that it does exist. So there are disability data out there and more and more. The one of the struggle at the moment with secondary data is the quality and the comparability of secondary data. So the graph on the screen shows kind of data from the last maybe four years on the Syrian refugee with disability in Jordan. And depending on the sources, you know, percentage varies from maybe 2.5% to over 25%. So there's a lot of data out there. But because it was collected differently, it can have leads to different results and it can be difficult to use. When we talk about disability data as well, it means again different things depending on the stage of the humanitarian program cycle that we're in. So we talk about the H&O HRP today. This is a very good entry point for collecting data and understanding the situation of a person with disability. The other data on disability can be collected at other stage of the response. One of the tools that we've been using to collect quantitative data on person with disability was the Washington group short set of questions. So we've tested this a lot with a wide range of humanitarian access in the country mentioned previously to kind of see how they work. So this is a set of six questions that was designed by the Washington group on disability statistics. It's a group that was commissioned by the UN Statistical Commission to address the lack of comparable data and disability and come up with a tool that is short to be integrated initially in national sciences or disability survey at population level and also a tool that's very easy to use. So they came up with those six questions and for each question you have four answer category. Plain language is one of the features of this question and also the fact that it does not use the word disability as a word that carries stigma that can affect the quality of the data. Further down the line they started developing other sets of questions realising that it was difficult to capture disability with only six questions at times. So the short set of questions is what I've showed previously but since then they've created an enhanced short set of questions which includes questions about anxiety and depression. They also have an extended set of questions they've created with UNICEF the child functioning module and they're looking at more and more module. I can think of inclusive education for example. So further modules are being developed depending on different features of the data collection. So using the Washington group question or collecting quantitative data in humanitarian action requires a lot of planning. We found in the research and for the reasons I've highlighted before it depends on what type of information is required. It depends on what stage of the program cycle we're in. And there is also a lot of capacity building needed for humanitarian actors to be able to not understand which will be able to use and apply it properly as well as being able to design the tool with the Washington question and analyse the data. So we found that it was important at the start before the data collection even starts to take time to plan and really understand what information for what purpose and make sure the training is done accordingly. One of the common mistakes we found with the Washington group was one to using more in a medical way to try to diagnose a person with disability which is not what they were created for. They were created to identify people at risk of restricted participation, so a risk of exclusion and not to identify people with magical condition. This is not to say that this information is not useful, but it's a different purpose when we think about inclusive programming. We're thinking of a person at risk of not being included in the response. So if the information needed was a more medical nature, a different tool was recommended. We also found that it was used as a targeting tool, tried to kind of select a population for humanitarian response. It was not designed again in that in mind. That's not saying that you cannot be using addition with audit criteria, but we felt like maybe more testing needed to be done. We also found there was some specificity in humanitarian action that might require the collection of additional information. So sometimes actors were interested in understanding the temporality. So how long had the person been experiencing difficulty for whether in addition there was medical condition, the cause of the difficulty, or the barriers that the person is facing when accessing services. So further information needed, maybe more questions to be asked as part of the data collection exercise. We also find that the entry point for collecting data in person with disability might be different depending on the type of crisis in disaster risk reduction. For example, we often use as part of preparedness in conflict, a lot of new assessment, maybe more registration, and in protected crisis often as part of monitoring. We globally found there was kind of different views of disability data for inclusive programming. So it was very useful to understand demographic, the population, the prevalence of the person with disability in a given population. It was also useful for organizations to be able to measure access of person with disability to services or activity. It was also useful to disaggregate key outcome performance indicator by disability as well as sex age and another factor to kind of understand how an intervention was was performing. I've got some brief example here I'm going to go through quite quickly population data. This is an example of the HNO, for example, kind of telling us at the bottom of the screen, the balance of person with disability in the population. This is more vulnerability in the assessment stage in Jordan. Again, by integrating the Washington group question, they cannot understand the relationship between disability and other factors here, for example, for security. This could be also integrating more case management features of registration activity to kind of understand access of the different groups, including person with disability or in monitoring to understand more disaggregation of outcome. And here it was outcome of food security and kind of the difference if any between person with disability and the general population. So all of those were different applications that were kind of helpful to design an inclusive response to collecting data using the Washington group is not everything. It gives an indication of a person with disability, whether they're rich, whether they were to access, but to be able to implement an inclusive response. It's important and it was stressed by Google at the start to understand the barriers and facilitate. So for example here, and this is also one of the data set on HDX. A survey was done in Jordan and Lebanon to understand access of children with disability to education. There was a different level of access shown by the data and the use of the Washington group. So that was using the child functioning module developed by UNICEF. So the question and barrier was then asked to the family and you can see that by the graphic which shows the different barriers. For children with disability domain barriers with overcrowded classrooms, which is 25.4% of respondents overcrowded classroom was only the third barrier mentioned with children without disability, only 11.2%. Understanding kind of the barriers faced by the different group is very helpful to then plan the response and ensure inclusive education. All of this and more is available on the learning toolkit that has been designed by Humanity and Inclusion and I'm sure I'll be able to share the resources with you all. A lot of the webcast includes an e-learning training pack for new races and a lot of supporting resources, helping to guide the use of the Washington group question and kind of reflect on what is inclusive programming. Thank you. Thank you so much, Pauline. Pauline was joining us from Syria. And now from Syria we go to Myanmar and we're going to hear from our cluster coordinator over there, Geraldine. Geraldine, please, over to you. Thank you very much, Mohamed. So I'm happy to share a little bit of the Myanmar experience in terms of including disability in Humanity and Action. I'd like to start, if you allow me, with some very quick background information on the humanitarian situation in Myanmar just to set the scene. There are over 900 people in the humanitarian assistance across the country including 245,000 IDPs, many of whom are also stateless. According to the government data, the nation's disability rate is 4.6%. This represents, roughly speaking, 2.3 million people. Far below WHO's 15% ratio. This is also below the estimated 20% that Gopal shared with us earlier. And Myanmar is also one of the countries in the world that is most affected by landmines with 9 out of 14 regions that are contaminated with 25% of the victims being children. Internally displaced persons as well as stateless communities are exposed to a wide range of protection risks. I won't go into this detail. But it goes without saying, unfortunately, that among those IDPs, stateless communities, persons with disabilities are even more marginalized and even more vulnerable to this protection risk. Now, what have we been doing in Myanmar around the issue of disability inclusion in humanitarian action? Since 2017, the protection sector has made disability inclusion one of its key priorities. And you will see that this is reflected in the 2017, 18, 19 HNO and HRP. Not only in the protection sector's chapter where we do list, at least in the 2019 HRP, we do list specific activities targeting persons with disabilities, but also in the documents chapel where we highlighted the needs and vulnerabilities of persons with disabilities. And we also made the strengthening of data collection and analysis on the situation of persons with disabilities. This has been also prioritized among the six actions for response monitoring in our 2019 HRP. So since 2017, all through 2018, we have focused our efforts mainly around data collection and protection mainstreaming, and I have to say to a lesser extent on targeted interventions for persons with disabilities. I will not give you an exhaustive presentation of all the work that has been done, but I just want to focus on a few examples. Starting with data collection. This relates directly to the previous presentation. We have been collecting data, one on really identifying persons with disabilities with a very strong focus, I have to say, on IDP camps in the various contexts we are operating in. And this has been done regularly through camp profiling exercise by CCCM actors primarily, and we've been working very closely with HCI, which provided trainings on the Washington group set of questions, the short set of questions to our animators. So we have quite, we have some data at the household level on the size and demographics of the affected population for which we want to prioritize interventions. We also did collect information on the protection risk faced by persons with disabilities. We've done that through, we've revised recently the protection risk analysis, when I say with the protection sector. But we've also collected information through regular protection monitoring and also through our protection incident monitoring system. So we do have some evidence based data on the risks that persons with disabilities are most exposed to. Again, I won't go into the detail, but certainly physical insecurity in conflict areas. We have, we keep receiving reports of persons with disabilities being left behind in the conflict areas, women and girls with disabilities being exposed to gender-based violence. We have very high level of extortions that persons with disabilities are victim of, very low level of school attendance and so on and so forth. The third area of data collection has been really, there's been a lot of efforts made in Myanmar in 2017, 2018 on collecting data on the barriers that persons with disabilities face in accessing human assistance and services. And we've done that through I would say three main means. Post-distribution monitoring exercises. We also have collecting that data through our complaints and response mechanisms that are available in all IDP camps. In some areas we have much more sophisticated CRM systems than in others that do allow us to have good analysis of the complaints. And the third way we've been collecting or analyzing the barriers that persons with disabilities face in accessing assistance and services have been stand-alone barriers assessment that have been conducted by CCCM actors, protection and education actors. And I have to say the two main really actors who have been conducting those barriers assessment are HI and DRC. Prior to these assessments again partners were trained on the Washington group sets of questions. So those assessments were quite critical in terms of not only assessing the barriers that persons with disabilities face in accessing assistance and services across the board in all areas health, food, wash, etc. But these assessments were quite key in terms of formulating really recommendation for all humanitarian actions, humanitarian actors that aim to improve access to assistance and services. But there are also recommendations on how to improve the social inclusion of persons with disabilities which has also been identified as a major gap in Myanmar as I am sure it is in other operation. Now we are not collecting data for the sake of collecting data. This is something we also have to be very careful about why we collect data. So how have we been using all this information and in particular to design quality programmatic interventions for persons with disabilities in Myanmar? So I would like to touch on two key areas that we have been working on. Protection mainstreaming on the one hand and standalone project for persons with disabilities on the other hand which I think is commonly referred to as the twin track approach. Protection mainstreaming has also been a key, key focus since 2016 in Myanmar. We have organized a number of training of trainers. We have carried out regular follow up trainings on protection mainstreaming for frontline workers from all clusters and sectors. We do have a list of dedicated protection mainstreaming focal points in the field. We have developed cluster specific checklist on protection mainstreaming. And based on the gaps that were identified through the barriers assessment in particular, as part of those protection mainstreaming efforts, human agent actors have been implementing some concrete activities aiming to again improve access for persons with disabilities. I'll just provide a few concrete examples. Camp management agencies are delivering door-to-door messages on access to services such as health, food and etc. for persons with disabilities because the lack of information on services that are available, the distance from distribution points have been identified as a key barrier. So we have now in some in our kind in particular we have camp management agencies delivering door-to-door messages. They are also organizing transportation every week for persons with disabilities to better access health facilities, to access food assistance. We are doing also a distribution of NFIs at the household level in the shelter where you have persons with disabilities live here. The WASH actors have been doing really a lot of work around protection mainstreaming including around disability inclusion. They have installed courts to guide the way to the toilets for blind persons. They have installed special toilet seats at household level. So we have and we have also been working on some new shelter design to prevent protection risks, but also to respond to the specific needs of persons with disabilities with physical impairment in particular in some locations. The other areas where we have been trying really to expand is really the standalone project for persons with disabilities. And I have to say this is an area where our efforts, our collective efforts, not only the protection sector, all clusters, this is where we really need to boost our efforts. We have the Victim Assistance Center supported by HI and Physical Rehabilitation Centers as well as mobile repair workshops that are run by ICRC. These are really the most, I would say, important project for persons with disabilities which benefit not only landmine victims in Myanmar, but all persons with physical impairments. And the approach is quite a holistic one where we include not only physical rehabilitation but also livelihood support. Maybe another concrete project that I would like to highlight here is one that has been implemented by UNHR since 2017. Again, it's a project that is really specific for persons with disabilities. It's a photo storytelling project. We have partnered with a group of professional photographers who are also the one organizing the Yangon Photo Festival. And they are providing a 12-day training on photo storytelling to IDPs who are living with disabilities in IDP camps in Kachin, in the northern part of Myanmar. And the project is really about empowering persons with disabilities, allowing them to tell their own stories, giving them a voice in their community but also beyond. We also make sure to include persons with physical but also mental impairments. We've observed that the negative attitudes and stigma against persons with intellectual impairments are even more acute. So we make sure that we have persons with different kinds of impairments that can participate in this training. And the participants produce their own photo stories. It's really about their life, about the challenges they face in displacement, but it's also about the opportunities that they have identified. And those participants compete in the Yangon Photo Festival. And we invite them to come to the festival in Yangon and having persons with disabilities talk about their life, the challenges they face, the opportunities they see has proven to be really a very powerful tool. And in 2017 and 2018 festivals, IDPs with disabilities have actually won some prizes in the emerging photographers category. So for us it's really, this project has provided a great opportunity to raise awareness about the challenges that IDPs with disabilities face in Myanmar, but it's also raising awareness about their extraordinary resilience and the potential and that they can exploit with a little bit of support. Maybe to conclude, I would like to say that while I feel that in Myanmar we've made significant progress on the issue of disability inclusion over the past few years, there is still a very long way to go. This year we will try to expand targeted programming in the areas of provision of assisting devices, which is really quite a gap area that has been identified in the area of psychosocial support, empowerment, social inclusion. And we will also need to strengthen our efforts in terms of monitoring and evaluating those activities, whether it's protection mainstreaming, whether it's targeting targeted interventions, we also need to do a better evaluation of these interventions. This is also very much in line with the protection sector strategy for 2019 and 2020. There are a large number of recommendations from the barriers assessments that remain to be acted upon, and this is also something we want to work on this year and in the years to come. We need to make much more noise about the specific situations of persons with disabilities in our operation. We feel that there is some momentum and we certainly need to secure more funding. And funding, we need to go beyond protection mainstreaming. I think we all recognize the fact that we need to secure dedicated funding for targeted interventions. Last month the team in Myanmar that is managing the Myanmar Humanity Fund organized a workshop on disability inclusion. This was done with the support also from HCI and ECHO. So this is really a very, this was very welcome. This is part of those efforts that are being undertaken around disability inclusion. The protection sector is also advocating for dedicating MHF funding. I believe there has been quite some progress made with the SERF at the global level, and we would like to follow that lead with the country pool funds so that we see more funding being allocated being firewalls for projects for persons with disabilities and we are advocating with the MHF advisory board in Myanmar. And again, looking at the disability inclusion in a holistic approach, this is certainly not the only responsibility of the protection sector alone. It's a whole of system responsibility and accountability. And we really hope that the YAS guidelines on inclusion of persons with disability in humanitarian action will, we hope this will provide us with also an excellent opportunity to put disability inclusion higher up on the agenda, certainly of the Myanmar HCT. And we will be, we will look at some specific events we would like to organize around this. I think I'll stop there. Thank you so much, Geraldine, for this. Thank you for your presentation. I would like to move now to Kirsten. Thank you very much, Maulam, and thank you to everybody for the really interesting presentation. I just wanted to pose a few questions to the group, which are the kinds of questions that we often get when we're out in the field. So the first question that we often hear is do we always need to collect data in order to ensure an inclusive response? And to respond to this question, I might first hand over to Pauline and see if you have any brief reflection on this question. Thank you very much, Kirsten. It is indeed a question that we often get asked. And I'll say that no, it's not always needed to collect data, especially when secondary data exists. I would put a caveat saying it is important to reflect on the quality of the secondary data available, but hopefully as we advance towards more awareness on disability data, there will be more and more out there. When no secondary data is available, it is very important to collect data on-person with disability, but it does not always have to be quantitative. I think in my presentation I went through a lot of quantitative ways to collect data, and travel and access or disaggregate indicators, but there are also some qualitative ways to collect data on-person with disability. My example was very important for that. So I would recommend collecting to be able to get the information and design an inclusive response. But we do also understand the reality of the field, and it's not always possible to collect data on-person with disability. And this is the prime example where reverting to secondary data or using the WHL 15% or higher, as Gopal said, can also be a useful indicator to plan an inclusive response. Thanks a lot, Pauline. And Gopal, did you or anybody else have anything to add to that response? Thank you, Kirsten, Gopal here. And I would just like to build on what Pauline just mentioned. In terms of data, you know, it is actually a different type of data, different type of information evidence that is required at different points of time on persons with disabilities or on issues related to persons with disabilities. That would help us to understand the situation better of persons with disabilities, what they are facing, and also to monitor access. So what we often see is the understanding that we have to collect data on persons with disabilities. While that is extremely important, there is other parts of the puzzle. For example, we need data on accessibility, how many schools, how many child-friendly spaces, how many food distribution points are accessible. Unless we are able to alongside population-level data on persons with disabilities, unless we are able to collect data on and have information on accessibility, on number of service providers who provide inclusive services, service providers in an area who provide services which are specific to persons with disabilities. So it's a vast range of this type of information that would help make humanitarian response, humanitarian action more inclusive. So the point I'm trying to make is that alongside population-level data, which is extremely important, and we require other type of information like accessibility, like service providers, people who are providing services on disability, human resources, capacity on disability existing in an area. All this information is required to make humanitarian action more inclusive of persons with disabilities. Thank you. One of the other questions that we often hear is, do we need disability experts to be able to do proper needs assessment and to design an inclusive response? And for that, I wanted to maybe perhaps first ask Geraldine if Geraldine, do you have any reflections on that? Thank you, Kerstin. I thought you would ask the experts first. I thought you would ask Pauline. Certainly, I think in Myanmar it has been absolutely critical to have the support from disability experts. And for example, we organize with the support from HCI, we organize an awareness-raising session for the members of the protection sector. And I have to say it was quite an eye-opener in terms of the lack of understanding from the whole group of what disability is, even starting from the definition of disability, what disability inclusion means. So that has proven to be quite useful, and I think that we would need to have much more of this awareness-raising session for the training among humanitarian actors. And the support also again from HCI has been critical to be able to conduct those barriers assessment in Rakhine, in Kachin. And it was quite clear when the training was organized for the animators these colleagues had actually no idea of even the basic definition of what impairment is. So I think it's absolutely critical, and this is something that we intend to continue in Myanmar. But I think it's also very important to think long-term, make sure also that we build communities' capacities. As humanitarian actors, we often tend to think a little bit short-term. So this is also one area where we are planning to step up our efforts. It's really on community-based protection, including on disability-related issues. But I leave it to Pauline, I think, to share her views on this. Thank you. Thanks, Geraldine. Pauline, was there anything you wanted to add? Yeah, just to briefly add, I think there are more and more tool and resources out there that means that there's less and less need for expert on disability. The Washington group questions, for example, are fairly easy to use. There's more and more guidelines around it. There's also the humanitarian inclusion standard for other people and people with disability and the coming YAS guidelines. And hopefully, all those resources would mean that, you know, agencies are more able to collect that data and plan to increase the responses. But I would agree with Geraldine that at the moment, there is a need for capacity-building on disability and also for some more variants of disability analysis where methodology is not standardized yet. There is a role at the moment that is filled by the disability experts. And I would stress also the need to reach to organization of persons with disability. That can have a real role to play at the moment on those two issues. Thanks Pauline and thank you everyone for your responses to the questions. I will hand back to Moham now. I think this is the, we come to the end of our webcast today. Thank you again for the panelists for being with us. Thank you for Pauline and Geraldine for joining us. And thank you, Christine, for the help and support that you provided. Thank you everyone, everyone again. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you everyone.