Our new CIP fellows are here! We’re delighted to welcome Elizabeth Patricia Pérez Sántiz, Khomraj Sharma and Shakhor Jock Kuany to the 2026-2027 CIP Fellowship for emerging researchers with disabilities.
The program supports researchers with disabilities from low- and middle-income countries through training, mentorship and exchange with CIP’s international network. Participants strengthen their research skills and develop projects grounded in their local contexts to inform disability-inclusive policies.
This year, we received more than 1,000 applications, a significant increase from previous years. The quality and breadth of experience among applicants made the selection process particularly challenging.
The new fellows bring perspectives from Mexico, Nepal and refugee communities in Kenya. Their research will explore gender, disability data and inclusive budgeting. Below, we introduce each fellow and their work.
Who are the new CIP fellows?
Elizabeth Patricia Pérez Sántiz
Elizabeth Patricia Pérez Sántiz is an Indigenous woman with a visual disability from the Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. She identifies as a “femidisca” and a sex activist and has been an activist since 2019, advocating for the enforcement and protection of the human rights of persons with disabilities, with an emphasis on the sexual and reproductive health of girls, adolescents, and women with disabilities. She holds master’s degrees in emotional intelligence, sexuality, and group support, as well as a doctorate in human sexology, among other qualifications. She seeks to work from an intercultural and intersectional perspective to bring Indigenous persons with disabilities to the forefront of discussions on accessibility, political and electoral rights, feminisms, and sexuality.
She provides individual and group support to women with disabilities on issues related to sexuality and sexual violence. She also facilitates comprehensive sexuality education workshops for children and adolescents with disabilities, as well as teachers and primary caregivers. She coordinates the civil society organization Amor Sin Fronteras AC, providing comprehensive rehabilitation for persons with visual disabilities, and produces Braille transcriptions for various establishments and institutions.
She is a member of several disability-focused collectives, including the Mexican Federation of Sexuality Education and Sexology, where she serves on the Accessibility and Disability Commission and the Scientific Committee. Through this work, she raises awareness and advocates within the field of sexology for the inclusion of a disability perspective.
Khomraj Sharma
Khomraj Sharma is a blind disability rights advocate from Myagdi, a remote hill district of western Nepal. He lost his sight at the age of nine, and the barriers that followed were social rather than physical: schooling that was not built for a blind child, and the assumption that such a child had no future ahead of him. He entered Nepal’s disability movement in March 2000 and has worked in it for twenty-six years since, so that the next generation of blind children in Nepal like his would not meet the same barriers.
He is Inclusion Advisor and Assistive Technology Trainer at the Nepal Association of the Blind. He founded Nepal’s first national audio library for blind readers in 2007, designed Kaski district’s first household survey of persons with disabilities in 2009–10, and served as a master trainer for Nepal’s National Population and Housing Census 2021, training trainers to train enumerators on how to ask the census disability questions and identify disability. As two-term President of the National Federation of the Disabled Nepal in Gandaki Province, the advocacy he led made Gandaki the first province in Nepal to enact a disability rights policy, act and regulation. He is the winner of World Blind Idol 2021, selected from twenty-six nominees across twenty-two countries.
As a 2026–2027 CIP Fellow, he is examining whether Nepal’s federal, provincial and local governments turn their disability budget commitments into money actually spent — and whether the disability data behind those decisions, including the census count he helped train enumerators to produce, is reliable enough to budget on.
Shakhor Jock Kuany
Shakhor Jock Kuany is a South Sudanese refugee and disability inclusion advocate based in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya. He holds a background in Special Needs Education, is a certified Trainer of Refugee Advocates under LERRN 2.0, co-led by R-SEAT and the International Institute for Humanitarian Law (IIHL).
He works as a Learning Support Assistant with Humanity & Inclusion, supporting learners with diverse disabilities, and brings extensive experience in humanitarian data collection and field supervision with UNHCR, WFP, and Department of Refugee Services (DRS) , including specialized training in the Washington Group Questions.
He is the founder and director of WeCanLead Organization of Persons with Disabilities (WeCanLead OPD), a grassroots, refugee-led organization advocating for the rights, dignity, and meaningful inclusion of persons with disabilities in refugee communities.
As a 2026 CIP Disability Data Fellow, he is conducting research titled “Counting the Uncounted: Understanding Disability Underreporting Among Refugees in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya.” The study examines gaps between binary yes/no disability identification and the lived experiences of persons with disabilities, using household surveys informed by the Washington Group Questions and qualitative engagement with community members and stakeholders to develop practical, evidence-based recommendations for more inclusive and accountable humanitarian data systems.
