Gender and Disability | From a rights perspective: toward an inclusive response to the COVID-19 crisis

This document was written in collaboration with UN Women’s Disability Inclusion and Intersectionality Portfolio (DIIP) within the context of the Disability-Inclusive COVID-19 Response and Recovery Global Programme at the country level, with support from the United Nations Partnership on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNPRPD).

Leaving no one behind is a shared responsibility of all United Nations System staff in the process of supporting States, especially during the COVID-19 crisis response and reconstruction efforts. However, ensuring that no one is left behind is one of our biggest challenges ahead. In fact, in this new world, where preexisting inequalities have been exacerbated by the pandemic, the historical exclusion of some population groups is at risk of becoming a gap even more difficult to bridge. The situation of disadvantage for many women and girls with disabilities, who were already marginalized before the pandemic broke out, has been extremely exacerbated. Caught between gender inequalities and disability discrimination, they may face new and multiple forms of violence, often without the possibility of making their needs, solutions and desire to participate heard due to the lack of mechanisms designed to allow their participation and tap their potential.