The Global Disability Fund (GDF) and the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) are joining forces to help ensure that humanitarian action reaches persons with disabilities and contributes to lasting, systemic change.
As humanitarian needs continue to outpace available resources, CERF is investing in life-saving assistance for some of the world’s most underfunded emergencies, with dedicated support to address the urgent needs of persons with disabilities and make humanitarian assistance more accessible and inclusive.
GDF will complement this humanitarian financing through catalytic investment, specialized expertise and strategic partnerships. Together, GDF and CERF aim to demonstrate how coordinated investment can address immediate needs while strengthening the systems, capacities and accountability mechanisms required for disability-inclusive humanitarian action over the longer term.
The partnership recognizes that financing alone is not enough. Meaningful disability inclusion requires organizations of persons with disabilities (OPDs) to help shape humanitarian priorities, plans and responses. It also requires humanitarian actors to have the expertise, tools and institutional capacity to identify and remove the barriers that prevent persons with disabilities from accessing assistance.
Through its Inclusion Catalyst Hub, GDF will provide technical assistance, capacity strengthening and support to OPDs and humanitarian partners. This work will help embed disability inclusion across humanitarian financing, planning, coordination, data collection, accountability and service delivery.
The partnership will connect immediate humanitarian response with longer-term recovery and resilience. It will support locally led approaches, strengthen the participation of OPDs and help ensure that the systems built during a crisis remain more inclusive after emergency funding has ended.
Announcing CERF’s humanitarian allocation, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher emphasized that financial resources must be matched by political will and decisive action:
Ola Abualghaib, Director of the Global Disability Fund, highlighted the importance of combining resources, expertise and leadership:
By aligning CERF’s humanitarian financing with GDF’s catalytic investment, technical expertise and partnerships with OPDs, the two funds will help turn emergency resources into lasting improvements in how humanitarian responses are designed, financed, coordinated and delivered.