Disability Is Not a Synonym for Vulnerability.

Written by a disability rights advocate who’s tired of listening to the same tired script.

For years, policy documents, humanitarian appeals, and development reports have repeated a familiar line: “Persons with disabilities are among the most vulnerable.” It appears in funding proposals, emergency response plans, and government strategies. It is rarely questioned.

But perhaps it should be.

Disability is not a synonym for vulnerability. And when we treat it as such, we risk misunderstanding both disability and vulnerability itself.

A physical impairment does not automatically produce risk. What produces risk are systems, such as
inaccessible infrastructure, discriminatory attitudes, weak institutions, poverty, conflict, and exclusionary policies. A wheelchair does not make someone vulnerable. A staircase without a ramp does. A hearing impairment does not exclude a person from information. The absence of sign language interpretation does.

The difference matters.

When disability is automatically equated with vulnerability, we reduce millions of people to a single narrative of helplessness. We unintentionally position persons with disabilities as passive recipients of aid rather than as citizens, professionals, leaders,s and decision-makers. We focus on protection, but not power.

The reality is far more complex.

Not all persons with disabilities face the same level of risk. Disability intersects with gender, age, income, geography, education, and social networks. An educated, employed man with a physical disability living in an urban centre does not navigate the same risks as a displaced adolescent girl with an intellectual disability in a rural settlement. Their experiences are shaped not just by disability, but by the layers of identity and opportunity surrounding it.

Risk is not evenly distributed. It is intensified where disability intersects with poverty, gender inequality, displacement, and isolation.

And here is the more uncomfortable truth: privilege exists within disability communities, too.

Some persons with disabilities hold social, economic, or political advantages that buffer them from certain risks. They may have access to higher education, urban services, digital connectivity, professional networks, or leadership roles within organisations. Some are invited to national consultations. Some influence policy debates. Some travel internationally to speak on global platforms.

Others remain invisible, particularly women in rural areas, persons with intellectual disabilities, older persons, or those without formal education or organisational affiliation. Their realities rarely make it to conference panels or donor briefings.

Acknowledging this internal inequality does not deny the existence of discrimination. It deepens our understanding of it.

Privilege is not fixed, and neither is vulnerability. A disability advocate like me may hold influence in policy circles but encounter barriers in healthcare. A man with a disability may benefit from gender privilege at home while facing employment discrimination in the labour market. A person may be empowered in one context and marginalised in another. Power shifts depending on the setting.

This is precisely why the language of blanket vulnerability is insufficient. It obscures nuance. It discourages power analysis. It leads to one-size-fits-all programming that may overlook those most at risk within already marginalised groups.

If inclusion is to mean anything, it must move beyond labels. It must ask harder questions. Who has access to decision-making spaces? Who controls resources? Who speaks on behalf of whom? Whose experiences are consistently amplified, and whose are sidelined?

Development and humanitarian actors often say they want to “leave no one behind.” But we can leave one behind if we fail to examine power, even within communities that are themselves excluded.

Disability is not vulnerability. Vulnerability is produced by barriers, systems, and unequal power relations. And those systems can be dismantled.

The disability rights movement has always been about dignity, agency, and equality. To honour that legacy, we must resist narratives that flatten lived realities into a single story of risk. Inclusion demands honesty. It demands nuance. And it demands that we examine power wherever it resides.

The conversation must evolve.

 

By: Godfrey Nanyenya

Turn Around Leader On Inclusion