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Innovation for older age and disability inclusion in humanitarian response

Tearfund's participatory audit approach gives older people and those with disabilities a voice in humanitarian response

2025 Available in English

Including older people and old people with disabilities

Despite widespread commitments and legal obligations to include people with disabilities and older people in humanitarian action, considerable work needs to be done to ensure their active participation. This briefing paper explores an innovative solution to address this.

Tearfund’s participatory audit approach, led by grassroots associations and organisations of people with disabilities and older people in Ethiopia, and developed in partnership with the Ethiopian Guenet Church Development and Welfare Organization (EGC/DWO) and Elrha’s FCDO-funded Humanitarian Innovation Fund, provides a model for meaningfully engaging older people and people with disabilities in humanitarian action. As the motto of the auditors reminds us, people with disabilities and older people have ‘a great role to play!’

By providing opportunities for older people and people with disabilities to actively audit humanitarian practices, we achieve more inclusive and effective humanitarian responses, better responding to the needs of communities, and better aligned with international law and humanitarian principles of impartiality and universality. 

Find out more about how your organisation could undertake a participatory audit by taking our online course on Tearfund Learn.

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