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Sami (not his real name) manages a rehabilitation team in a hospital in the Idlib region. He describes the dramatic situation after the earthquake.

As the world marks International Day of Persons with Disabilities on 3 December, Handicap International reports that 75% of people with disabilities believe they are excluded from humanitarian response. Closely involved in international forums such as the World Humanitarian Summit and the current Conference on Climate Change (COP21), Handicap International is calling on the international community to ensure people with disabilities are taken into account when preparing and implementing humanitarian response to crises.

At the start of the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, many people with disabilities did not know about Ebola because the national public awareness campaign did not share information in formats they could understand.

Handicap International, present in Sierra Leone since 1996, stepped in to ensure people with different kinds of disabilities knew how to prevent the disease. 

‘This is not something you can do if you aren’t passionate about it’. This was the first thing Jonathan Matambo said to me, the mine detection dog handler who joined Handicap International’s demining team in Casamance, Senegal, last September. The 33-year old divides his time between his family, who live in Harare, Zimbabwe, and his two explosive detection dogs, Katja and Rex.

Anja was injured during the earthquake. He is currently beeing treated by a medical team in one of HI’s 13 partner hospitals in northwest Syria.

Since the huge earthquake hit Haiti on 12th January 2010, Humanity & Inclusion has continued to work alongside the victims and provide assistance, in particular high quality rehabilitation services.

At nine years of age, Katja is something of a veteran. However, each day this female Belgian Shepherd comes to work with fresh energy and enthusiasm. She has worked in an impressive number of African countries: Kenya, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo... and thanks to her exceptional sense of smell she has detected dozens of explosive devices.

Although the conflict between the Senegalese army and the rebel forces of the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) appears to be slowly fading, populations still face the threat of anti-personnel mines. At the beginning of December, Handicap International launched a mine-clearing programme. The first operations in the village of Diagnon, east of Ziguinchor, began in mid-December and aim to clear 30,000 square metres of land of mines, barbaric weapons that primarily kill and mutilate civilians.

Elyas (nickname) is a member of HI’s team in North West Syria. He lived through the earthquake. He also took part in the emergency response put in place by HI.

Nirmala, 8, has sparkling eyes. After losing her right leg following the earthquake which struck Nepal in April 2015, she underwent a long period of rehabilitation with the support of Humanity & Inclusion physiotherapists. Today, she is walking again on her prosthetic leg and obsessed with just one thing: becoming an actress.

What is psychological first aid? How do you approach someone in distress? How do you help them? Habib (nickname), a member of HI’s psychosocial support team, shares his experience.

On 25 April 2015, Nepal was rocked by an earthquake, affecting 8 million Nepalese people. Khendo, 8 years old, lost her leg in the disaster. After more than six months of rehabilition sessions with Handicap International, she received a prosthesis and can now walk again. Khendo will soon return to school.

Handicap International began working in the Tibet Autonomous Region - where its many projects were designed to promote the social inclusion of people with disabilities - in 2000. In mid-2015, the organisation withdrew from the region and entrusted the follow-up of its projects to its former local partner, the Tibet Disabled Persons' Federation.

Handicap International’s demining operations have been running since 2011 in the province of North Lebanon, and more recently have been deployed in the province of Mount Lebanon. The civil war, which tore the country apart between 1975 and 1990, left swathes of land rendered unusable by landmines. This land has now been cleared and handed back to the local inhabitants.

Mozambique was officially declared to be free of mines on 17 September 2015. Handicap International has been a leading actor in demining in the country since it launched its first operations in 1998. Over the course of its 17 years of work in Mozambique, the organisation has demined over 16 million square metres, neutralised 6,000 antipersonnel mines and 5,000 unexploded remnants of war. Grégory Le Blanc, Handicap International’s Head of Mission in the country, explains the benefits of this demining work for the population who, until very recently, have lived with the constant threat of mines.