Peace Agreements and Persons with Disabilities

This report contributes to ongoing efforts to recognise and support those with disabilities during and after conflict by examining the extent to which peace agreements include provisions addressing them as a group.

Peace agreements are ‘formal, publicly available documents, produced after discussion with conflict protagonists and mutually agreed to by some or all of them, addressing conflict with a view to ending it’ (Bell and Badanjak 2019: 2). Peace agreements have the potential to help address the marginalisation and discrimination faced by persons with disabilities prior to and during conflict as well as those that have disabilities because of conflict. At their core, peace agreements are both backwards and forwards looking: they seek to end violence, but also to ensure a sustainable peace and transformed society by addressing those issues that caused conflict in the first place and flowed from conflict as a result (Easterday 2014, Bell 2008). As such, peace agreements can also help create environments where persons with a disability are empowered and fully integrated into post-conflict societies.