“Human rights have a home, it is where people reside, live, work, grow old; it is in their regions, municipalities and neighbourhoods. It is also in their home that people experience disasters. Empowering people with disabilities to actively participate in disaster management needs to be regarded as an approach of protecting human rights. In order to achieve this, it requires above all the will to establish and strengthen an inclusive structure of society, ” stated Josef Neumann (Germany, SOC), Congress member addressing the Conference on Including People with Disabilities in Disaster Preparedness and Response in Brussels (Belgium) on 5 December 2014. “People with disabilities need to be actively involved in planning, shaping and implementation phases of disaster management, and the people in charge of disaster management (such as specialised experts in this area) need to be appropriately trained and educated”, he explained”.
