Humanitarian Mitigation Strategies Needed to Buttress the Well-Being of Persons with Disability in Disasters in Kisumu County, Kenya

Abstract

This paper is focused on the fact that some humanitarian mitigation strategies employed are yet to enhance the well-being of persons with disabilities in disasters in Kisumu County, Kenya. The problem is that person with disability are not completely involved in crafting of the mention strategies.  The study employed semi-structured questionnaire instruments to gather information on humanitarian policies applicable to PWD in disaster context. It was used with humanitarian officers-98 and government officers-98.Further, the researcher adopted semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions which were employed as one of the methods for data collection to provide qualitative data and were complemented by the quantitative data. The researcher used interviews with the regional director of Kenya Red Cross Society, regional directors of UN agencies, the Kisumu County special programs officer, managers of DPOs and director of National Council for People with Disabilities.Secondary data was collected from a variety of sources which included library books, information from journals and other government documents on contributions of humanitarian organizations to the well-being of persons with disability in disaster context. These documents include the national Policy in PWD, Kenya constitution, 2010, UN conventions on PWD. The variables of the study were subjected to descriptive statistics. The qualitative data was analyzed by consolidating emerging themes from the key informant interviews, topic analysis, and cut and paste methods on the focus group discussion transcripts. Quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequencies and percentages. The researcher presented data findings in form of frequency tables, pie charts, bar graphs and narratives. The study concludes that to reduce the vulnerability of the disabled to disasters, inclusive humanitarian mitigation strategies such as disability focal points in camps or shelters, disability component be part of humanitarian action need to be adopted. The study recommends that humanitarian mitigation strategies include creation of specialized agencies, coordination of humanitarian activities with PWD/DPOs, humanitarian disability programs and individual disaster assistance for PWD. Mitigation strategies on humanitarian relief include decentralizing of humanitarian services by creating deports creation of emergency response systems, rehabilitation and medical services. This would make accessibility of humanitarian relief easier for PWD. Information on PWD can be acquired by way of effective data collection mitigation strategies such as social network tool to capture data on number of persons with disability, online mapping and focused discussion groups in Kisumu County.