‘No woman with a disability should be coerced into sharing her food or cash with a male community member because custom dictates she cannot manage her own resources’
Every year, across hunger hotspots, the World Food Programme (WFP) consistently identifies people with disabilities as among the most food-insecure and nutritionally deficient. For WFP to do its job properly, our staff must understand the root causes and nuances of the challenges people with disabilities face in more than 120 countries.
This requires hiring people with disabilities (as WFP has done in Mozambique, for example) and training staff to establish a baseline of expertise – not only within WFP but also among our partners, as seen in Venezuela and Lebanon. Community messaging also plays an important role. Yet, as WFP faces unprecedented funding cuts, hard-won gains risk being reversed.
In 2024, WFP reached 6.5 million people with disabilities across 60 countries. This work has been underpinned by years of building and implementing systems to ensure that people with disabilities benefit from our services on an equal basis. We partner with disability-focused organizations to improve targeting and deliver assistance safely and accountably to those left furthest behind.
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No person with albinism should have their life threatened for leaving home to receive assistance. No woman with a disability should be coerced into sharing her food or cash with a male community member because custom dictates she cannot manage her own resources.
Disability is not just an individual impairment – it’s about how someone with an impairment can overcome barriers to survival and realize their potential
For WFP, listening is key – to the people most affected by hunger. Numbers tell one story, but communities and representative organizations of people with disabilities tell another. They inform us about barriers to accessing services, risks, and discrimination. They are our community “course-correctors.”
To date, WFP has signed more than 19 agreements with organizations representing people with disabilities, strengthening programmes in countries such as Venezuela, Mozambique, Lebanon, and Nepal.
What WFP needs
The challenges we face are multiple. For people with disabilities, hunger is not a series of statistics – it is about people, in all their diversity, and the varying difficulties they face in reaching assistance.
- We must have better data on who these people are, what barriers they face, and what agency they have to cope with shocks.
- We need better and more meaningful ways of engaging representative organizations so that collective voices are heard.
- We need trained and reliable cooperating partners to ensure safe and inclusive delivery.
- We need open and meaningful dialogue with national governments to create enabling environments that ensure people with disabilities transition to durable national solutions.
Even when WFP targets programmes at people with disabilities, access itself can be an issue. Some can reach cash distribution points, but many cannot.
In northern Syria, the UN estimates that 37 percent of the population lives with some form of disability – well above the global average of 16 percent. In Gaza, ten children a day were losing a limb at the height of the conflict, while 33,000 people have become disabled since the start of the war. Access to food and nutrition in these situations severely compromised.
WFP offices in Syria have invested significantly in accessibility, adapting distribution methods and improving last-mile food provision. But all of this takes time and money. With funding already more than halved in 2025, it is difficult to see how investments to improve access to life-saving assistance can continue, especially with hunger projected to rise in 2026.
WFP focuses on the root causes of inequality. Disability is not just an individual impairment – it is about overcoming barriers to survival and realizing potential. In many countries, people with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities are not considered as important to local economies. This hampers humanitarian organizations like WFP from enrolling them in resilience programmes, as they are often excluded from referrals or participant selection.
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Meanwhile, discrimination – often resulting in violence – undermines WFP’s ability to deliver assistance safely and inclusively.
Still, as we mark 3 December, it is worth remembering that small victories count.
Take Maadou, for example – a self-proclaimed inclusive village in Guinea, thanks to collaboration and advocacy by our colleagues and the community. Or the sports tournament in Aweil, South Sudan, organized to emulate a mini-Paralympics. Or the Mahata Station stands set up at distribution sites in Lebanon, where people share positive messages on disability inclusion.
These are the results of investment, allyship, and passion – proof of WFP’s commitment over the past five years to uphold its mission of tackling hunger, including among people with disabilities.
The challenge now is to build on these gains, in uncertain times, and ensure that next year there are more small victories – not fewer.