Differences matter: planning and delivering inclusive humanitarian action in contexts where explosive weapons are used

As conflicts become increasingly urbanised, the use of explosive weapons in populated areas (EWIPA) has become a common feature of war.

This is causing devastating human suffering and widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure. In 2025, explosive weapons killed more than 22,600 civilians across 65 countries and territories.

When explosive weapons with wide-area effects are used, civilians account for most casualties. This is because they were designed for open battlefields, not cities. Their destructive radius and inaccuracy make them inherently indiscriminate whenever they’re used where civilians live.

But this indiscriminate violence does not affect everyone in the same way. Sex, age, gender, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation, displacement status, and other interesting identities all interact to shape how civilians experience conflict and their ability to survive, recover and rebuild their lives.

Yet civilians are still too often treated as a homogeneous group, as though the effects of explosive violence on their lives, are by and large the same.

There has been progress in recognising that some groups experience explosive violence differently. Save the Children’s partnership with Imperial College London, for instance, has advanced how the sector understands child blast injuries and rehabilitation, demonstrating that children are not simply “small adults” but have distinct physiological vulnerabilities to blast effects and different rehabilitation needs. Similarly, work by UNIDIR  and others has advanced the sector’s understanding of the gendered impacts of explosive weapons.

But understanding often stops at the first layer of difference. Women, children, older persons and persons with disabilities  are treated as single cohorts , despite their diversity; this includes the various types of impairments experienced by persons with disabilities. 

Yet it is often the interaction between a person’s multiple identities, vulnerability factors and wider social and political systems that determines who is most exposed to harm, and who is most likely to be excluded from, or unable to access, services and assistance in EWIPA contexts.

The three interconnected inclusion challenges humanitarian systems face

In conversations over the past two years with local and international organisations and survivors, in contexts including Gaza, Ukraine and Yemen, I kept hearing variations of the same frustration: humanitarian systems continue to struggle with inclusion because they continue to use a largely “binary approach” to humanitarian action.

First, there is the question of what humanitarian systems can see: the data collected, the assessment tools used and the categories through which affected populations are understood. Too often, humanitarian actors fail to ask who is missing from the data, and why.

Second, there is the question of how humanitarian systems think: the binary approaches, assumptions, biases and sectoral silos that continue to shape analysis and decision making.

Third, there is the question of who humanitarian systems are designed for: the often-unspoken assumptions about who can evacuate, access information, travel to a distribution point, queue for assistance or navigate digital registration systems.

These challenges are distinct but deeply interconnected. What we collect influences what we analyse. What we analyse influences what, and who, we prioritise. And those priorities ultimately determine who receives assistance and who is left behind.

Understanding different people’s capacity for protection

Research by Humanity & Inclusion found that what often matters most is not vulnerability as a label, but people’s capacity for protection: their ability to flee, access information about evacuation, reach shelter and later access the services that support recovery. In contexts where explosive weapons are used, that capacity often comes down to mobility. And mobility can become the difference between life and death.

But mobility is not simply a physical issue. It may be shaped by different types of impairment, ill health, poverty, documentation requirements, or social and cultural norms, stigma and discrimination. This is why broad categories tell us so little.

The same factors that shape exposure to explosive violence often shape access to services and humanitarian assistance afterwards. People who cannot evacuate may also struggle to reach aid distributions. People who miss warnings may also miss information about services. People who lose mobility aids may also lose access to healthcare, education, livelihoods and protection activities.

Conflict and explosive violence do not create these inequalities from scratch. They expose and intensify inequalities that already exist.

The scale of complex injuries caused by explosive weapons

Unlike many other forms of violence, explosive weapons generate large numbers of complex traumatic injuries requiring long-term rehabilitation, assistive technologies and specialised support. Explosive violence creates disability at a scale rarely seen with other forms of conflict harm. Gaza, for example, has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world.

Yet at precisely the moment these needs increase, rehabilitation is often deprioritised and underfunded. It continues to be treated as a specialist service rather than an essential, lifesaving intervention. When equipment is made available, it is often “one size fits all”, leaving children with inadequate prosthetics or having to use adult wheelchairs.

If the effects of explosive weapons are foreseeable (and decades of research strongly suggest they are) then the way these effects will impact different civilians in different ways is foreseeable too. The risks faced by an older person with limited mobility, a child with a mental impairment or a displaced woman caring for young children are not exceptional circumstances. They are predictable consequences of using explosive weapons in populated areas and should inform how states assess civilian harm and implement precautionary measures.

What is needed?

The Political Declaration on Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas commits states to providing assistance that is holistic, integrated, gender-sensitive and non-discriminatory. We need to turn that commitment into practice.

We need data systems that move beyond broad categories and capture -as a minimum- how sex-, age-, disability and gender  interact to shape people’s experiences of conflict.

We need rehabilitation, assistive technologies and disability-inclusive services to be recognised as essential and lifesaving components of humanitarian response rather than specialist concerns.

We need humanitarian systems designed with diversity in mind from the outset, rather than retrofitted for inclusion after the fact.

We need to invest in local organisations, women-led organisations, organisations of persons with disabilities and survivor networks, whose knowledge is essential to understanding civilian harm.

And we need affected communities themselves to shape the design, delivery and evaluation of humanitarian responses.