About the report
This global report of COVID-19 social protection for persons with disabilities, prepared by CIP for ILO and UNICEF under a UNPRPD initiative, reviews how governments worldwide responded to the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on this group. As of May 2020, only 60 of 181 countries with pandemic social protection measures had made any specific reference to persons with disabilities.
By mid-May 2020, 181 countries had rolled out COVID-19 social protection measures. Just 60 of them mentioned persons with disabilities at all. That gap is the starting point for this global overview of COVID-19 social protection for persons with disabilities, prepared by the Center for Inclusive Policy (CIP) for ILO and UNICEF under the UN Partnership on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNPRPD).
Why Was the Starting Point Already Weak?
Persons with disabilities make up 15% of the world’s population and already faced higher poverty and lower access to social protection before the pandemic hit. High-income countries, which spend an average of 1.4% of GDP on disability support, offered something close to universal coverage; in the EU, 68.1% of people with an activity limitation would have fallen into poverty without it. Low- and middle-income countries told a different story: only 18.5% of persons with significant disabilities had access to disability-related social protection, dropping to just 1% in low-income countries, with very few governments investing more than 0.3% of GDP in this area.
What Kinds of Measures Did Governments Actually Announce?
Three main categories emerged. Cash transfers were by far the most common, through one-off payments, advanced disbursements, top-ups to existing pensions, or expanded coverage. In-kind support came next, mostly food and hygiene packages delivered to households. Services, helplines, home-based care, and accessible information, were the rarest category of all.
What Did the Numbers Actually Look Like?
They varied enormously. Georgia offered a one-off payment of 600 GEL (about $187) to persons with severe disabilities. India’s national pension top-up came to roughly $13, spread across three monthly installments. Sri Lanka paid LKR 5,000 to both existing disability allowance recipients and people on the waiting list. South Africa raised its disability grant by R250 a month. The spread reflects how uneven both baseline social protection systems and pandemic responses were across countries.
What Got Left Out?
Community-based services barely featured in any country’s announced response, a gap CIP’s consultations with OPDs confirmed directly: governments leaned heavily on civil society to fill needs that public systems weren’t built to meet. That overreliance meant support often depended on where an NGO happened to be active, not on a person’s actual entitlement.
Why Track This Monthly?
This overview was designed as a living document, updated monthly and paired with country case studies and thematic briefs, so that governments building back better would have an evolving evidence base for what a genuinely universal, inclusive social protection floor requires, rather than a one-time snapshot.
