People with disabilities are most at risk and last to be looked for in disasters like earthquakes and floods, a UN official has said. A lack of available data means they remain “lost and excluded” from rescue operations, said Gertrude Fefoame, the new chair of the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities. “Covid exposed us to devastation. As if that is not enough, there are more and more issues around disasters, conflicts, health, the environment. People with disabilities, especially women and girls, [end up being the most deprived],” said Fefoame, a longtime disability rights advocate who became the first African woman to lead the committee when she was elected earlier this month. People with disabilities, and the organisations representing them, are not consulted in programmes dealing with disaster management and assessing risks, she added. In many places, there is no data available on who is living with which disability. “If you don’t have data [on people with disabilities], why are you going to look for them? You don’t know who is missing. When you’re not counted, you’re already excluded. That is the situation we experience in most cases.” Fefoame said that progress on achieving equal rights was lagging behind, especially after the pandemic, which highlighted “the gaps and taken persons with disabilities many steps backwards in all areas”. “The gaps caused when schools had to close and many countries [switched to remote learning] have never been bridged. When you come to employment, the story is not better. Many people lost their jobs and income, and have never recovered.” Women and girls with disabilities are more likely to face sexual violence, and rates of domestic violence rose during lockdowns around the world. “Not everybody has been able to come out of that pain and trauma they went through. There are still issues,” said Fefoame. People who lose jobs and a steady income are more vulnerable and dependent on others, who may abuse them. Many women with disabilities are likely to be either begging on the street or dependent on someone doing them a favour, Fefoame explained. “If someone is abusing her, she will not speak out because she doesn’t know where her next meal is coming from,” Fefoame said. “This is the reality people are experiencing.”