UNICEF’s Commitment to Inclusive Rehabilitation for Children

Around the world, 240 million children live with some form of disability – and a staggering number of them are still waiting for basic rehabilitation services, quality education, and the chance to participate fully in their communities. UNICEF, the United Nations agency dedicated to children’s rights, has been working to change this – not through isolated interventions, but through a comprehensive, long-term commitment to inclusive rehabilitation. From policy frameworks to on-the-ground teacher training, UNICEF’s approach tackles the issue from every angle.

The disability inclusion policy and strategy (DIPAS) 2022-2030 🔗

The cornerstone of UNICEF’s current work is its Disability Inclusion Policy and Strategy (DIPAS) 2022-2030. The DIPAS provides a framework for UNICEF to deliver disability inclusion at scale, across its programmes and operations, with a vision of a world where all children, including those with disabilities, live in barrier-free and inclusive communities where persons with disabilities are embraced and supported across the life cycle to realize and defend their rights, and to achieve full and effective participation.

The DIPAS was developed through intensive internal and external consultations, including UN agencies, governments, organizations of persons with disabilities, and youth with disabilities. It is guided by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy (UNDIS).

Six strategic priorities 🔗

The DIPAS sets out six strategic priorities: prevention of stigma and discrimination; improvement of disability-inclusive services, programmes and workplaces; access to comprehensive community care and support services; access to assistive technology; disability-inclusive action in humanitarian, emergency and fragile contexts; and full and meaningful participation of persons with disabilities. Together, these priorities form a clear roadmap for mainstreaming disability inclusion across every level of UNICEF’s work – from global policy to local programme delivery.

Concrete internal targets 🔗

The DIPAS isn’t just an external-facing strategy. UNICEF has committed to accelerating disability inclusion across its programmes and operations in both development and humanitarian action, targeting 10 per cent of total expenditure directed toward disability inclusion by the year 2030. By 2025, all UNICEF regional offices will have at least one dedicated full-time disability specialist, and 75 per cent of UNICEF staff will have undergone training on disability inclusion. These are measurable benchmarks – not aspirational language – which makes the DIPAS a genuinely accountability-driven framework.

Advocacy for children’s rights in rehabilitation 🔗

Policy frameworks matter, but they are only as powerful as the advocacy that pushes them into practice. UNICEF works with governments to advocate for disability-inclusive policies and legislations, along with adequate investments to put them in place. It also helps strengthen the capacities of frontline workers, supports parents, amasses evidence for change, and engages communities to address stigma and discrimination.

Children with disabilities are often overlooked in policymaking, limiting their access to education and their ability to participate in social, economic and political life. Nearly 50 per cent of children with disabilities are not in school, compared to only 13 per cent of their peers without disabilities. Robbed of their right to learn, children with disabilities are often denied the chance to take part in their communities, the workforce and the decisions that most affect them.

To address this, UNICEF is calling on governments to provide children with disabilities with equal opportunities, to consult persons with disabilities, and consider the full range of disabilities, as well as the specific needs of children and their families, when providing inclusive services and equitable quality education. This includes actively involving children and young people with disabilities in the policymaking process itself – not treating them as passive recipients of decisions made on their behalf.

Rehabilitation as a rights issue 🔗

Children with disabilities constantly face barriers to the enjoyment of their rights and inclusion in society. The tide is changing, however, as many countries have begun to reform their laws and structures to promote the participation of children with disabilities as full members of society – with discussions covering access to education, health services and rehabilitation, social and legal assistance, play and cultural activities, and vocational and life-skills training. UNICEF’s advocacy work ensures that rehabilitation is understood not as a charitable service, but as a fundamental right every child is entitled to.

Capacity building and partnerships 🔗

Changing policy at the national level means very little if teachers, caregivers, and local administrators aren’t equipped to act on it. This is where UNICEF’s capacity-building work becomes essential. UNICEF builds the capacity of education systems in partner countries by training teachers, administrators and communities, and providing technical assistance to governments. It also shines a spotlight on the needs of children with disabilities by conducting research and hosting roundtables, workshops and other events for government partners. Additionally, UNICEF assists with monitoring and evaluation in partner countries to close the implementation gap between policy and practice.

Inclusive education toolkit and training 🔗

To ensure that all UNICEF staff have a good basic understanding of inclusive education, 14 webinars and accompanying technical booklets were developed and are now available online. UNICEF also developed an Inclusive Education Toolkit consisting of an Introductory Module and three Trainer-of-Trainer Modules on Inclusive Education. These resources aren’t just for internal use – they are publicly accessible, allowing educators, NGO workers, and policymakers around the world to build their skills in inclusive practice.

On-the-ground examples 🔗

Since 2013/2014, UNICEF has worked through implementing partners to improve accessibility through the construction of ramps, refurbishing and equipping resource rooms, providing children with disabilities with rehabilitation sessions, and supplying mobility and assistive devices. To improve the quality of education available to these children, UNICEF has trained teachers, including resource room teachers, on the delivery of inclusive education services, and deployed assistant teachers inside schools.

In Cameroon, the impact of this approach is visible. UNICEF trained more than 82 teachers and facilitators working in schools and temporary learning spaces on inclusive education practices, including Universal Design for Learning, basic Braille and sign language, and psychosocial support for children affected by conflict and trauma. Through community engagement, radio programmes, and direct outreach, UNICEF and its partners reached more than 14,000 people with messages promoting inclusion and challenging stigma.

In Europe, the scale of collaborative reform is equally notable. In Serbia, an EU-funded project implemented with UNICEF support strengthened the capacity of 4,000 education professionals and 1,000 professionals in all inter-sectoral committees, reaching children in 1 in 10 schools across the country. The project introduced innovative approaches to build the capacity of teachers and school professionals, established model schools for inclusive education, and set up three resource centres for assistive technologies.

Looking ahead, UNICEF aims to enable an additional 30 million children with disabilities to gain a good quality education by 2030 through programmes in more than 140 partner countries – focusing on collecting disaggregated data, assisting governments to develop and implement inclusive education sector plans, making school buildings accessible, supplying accessible learning materials and assistive devices, building the capacity of administrators and teachers, and campaigning to end discrimination and stigma.

Knowledge dissemination and research 🔗

Sustainable rehabilitation cannot rest on good intentions alone – it requires evidence. UNICEF has consistently invested in producing and sharing the knowledge that governments, practitioners, and communities need to improve their rehabilitation systems.

The DIPAS highlights an urgent need for stronger evidence to drive disability-inclusive action. At the Global Disability Summit in 2022, UNICEF committed to developing a Global Research Agenda for Children with Disabilities, outlining key research priorities and a strategy to enable research to improve policies, programs, and investments. UNICEF is progressively mainstreaming disability across its research and foresight work, actively engaging children with disabilities and organizations of persons with disabilities in shaping research objectives and ensuring that findings inform policy and practice.

Why evidence matters for rehabilitation 🔗

Research plays a critical role in shaping policies that improve programmes and outcomes for children with disabilities. Without robust data, children with disabilities remain invisible in decision-making. With it, policies can be well-funded when the scale of need is accurately understood, effective when interventions are informed by real challenges and lived experience, and prioritized when children with disabilities are fully included in global monitoring frameworks.

UNICEF also calls on a broad ecosystem of stakeholders to drive this evidence agenda forward. Governments and policymakers are called upon to prioritize disability-inclusive research to drive policy reform. Donors and development partners are encouraged to invest in long-term, participatory disability research, while researchers and institutions are urged to collaborate with organizations of persons with disabilities and produce actionable evidence. Seminars, roundtables, and published reports all form part of this continuous loop of learning – ensuring that what works in one country can be adapted and applied in another.

Reaching communities beyond formal channels 🔗

Knowledge dissemination isn’t limited to academic publications. In Senegal, for example, UNICEF strengthened its commitment to the inclusion of children with disabilities by re-engaging the government on a national policy draft on inclusive and special education, with the recruitment of technical experts. It also worked with education authorities to set up a transition class for visually impaired children and provided all necessary materials. In another region, hearing-impaired children were enrolled in inclusive schools where teachers, parents and students were trained in sign language to facilitate their integration. These localized, community-rooted efforts translate global knowledge into tangible outcomes for individual children.

The bigger picture: Rehabilitation as community transformation 🔗

UNICEF’s work makes clear that rehabilitation for children with disabilities cannot be treated as a narrow clinical concern. It requires changing minds, reforming policies, training educators, generating evidence, and building systems that leave no child behind. The DIPAS 2022-2030 provides the overarching structure, but the real work happens in classrooms in Cameroon, resource centres in Serbia, and sign language training sessions in Senegal. Each of these efforts, taken together, reflects a vision of rehabilitation that is fundamentally about human dignity and inclusion – not just physical recovery.

The inclusive education and disability inclusion work UNICEF is doing signals a shift in how the international community understands disability – from a condition to be managed, to a dimension of human diversity that systems must be designed to accommodate from the start.

What do you think? Given that nearly half of all children with disabilities worldwide are still out of school, how much responsibility should international organizations like UNICEF bear in pushing national governments to enforce inclusive rehabilitation policies? And in communities where stigma around disability remains strong, what do you think is the most effective first step – changing attitudes or changing systems?

References

1. https://www.unicef.org/unicef-disability-inclusion-policy-and-strategy-dipas-2022-2030
2. https://www.unicef.org/education/inclusive-education