Paper details
| Paper authors | Giada Costantini |
| In panel on | How can humanitarians leverage the experiences of persons with disabilities in humanitarian contexts (Roundtable) |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
In-Person / |
Abstract
Despite decades of legal frameworks and policy commitments, children with disabilities—especially those forcibly displaced—remain structurally excluded from humanitarian education response and research. Grounded in Critical Disability Theory and based on empirical research with Syrian refugee children with disabilities, their families and education actors in Lebanon, this paper interrogates the power structures underpinning Western humanitarianism. It examines how systemic ableism, colonial legacies, and geopolitical aid logics intersect to marginalise refugee children with disabilities from education and other life-sustaining services.
I argue that inclusion remains narrowly technical and depoliticized—more a tick-box exercise than a transformative practice. The categories of ‘refugee’ and ‘disability’ are commodified to serve donor interests, and inclusion is extended only to those who conform to neoliberal ideals of productivity and normativity. Those whose bodies and minds resist these ideals are rendered disposable, embodying what Agamben (1995) calls ‘bare life.’
These dynamics are compounded by a global political economy of aid in which donor-driven priorities—rather than need—determine who receives assistance. As austerity deepens, refugee children with disabilities risk further de-prioritisation. This paper explores the systemic barriers toward inclusion, and it advocates for a cross-sector, disability and refugee-led humanitarian action that challenges, rather than reproduces, the very structures that exclude.
