The United Nations has assembled a group of U.N. human rights experts to look into how the international community could better respond to the needs of differently abled Haitians and disabled persons in other countries stricken by natural disasters.
The U.N. said March 5 in a statement that the experts would look into how the needs of the disabled could be addressed under relief and reconstruction plans for Haiti, where a Jan. 12 quake killed some 200,000 and injuired scores of others.
Following a meeting in Geneva late February, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities had underlined the need to include the disabled in making decisions on post-disaster social and economic development.