Ukraine: Stigma toward persons with disabilities and survivors of explosive ordnance

Executive summary

Stigma toward persons with disabilities and survivors of explosive ordnance (EO) in Ukraine is not primarily a matter of individual attitudes. It is an outcome of how disability is defined, assessed, funded, and represented across public institutions and social life. While Ukraine has taken important steps toward alignment with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), the implementation of rights remains uneven. As a result, stigma is reproduced through everyday administrative routines, service interactions, and public narratives that reinforce dependency, unequal treatment, and social distance.

Systemic Dynamics

The research shows that stigma operates simultaneously at four interconnected levels:

1. Public stigma, through persistent narratives of dependency, tragedy, or heroic sacrifice.

2. Self-stigma, expressed as feelings of being a burden or requiring justification for participation.

3. Institutional stigma, embedded in service procedures, certification systems, and communication norms that implicitly reduce agency.

4. Structural stigma, reflected in fragmented governance, medicalised eligibility, variable regional provision, and affordability gaps.

These layers reinforce one another. Even where legislation and policy frameworks are progressive, the mechanisms of implementation-how eligibility is verified, how services are delivered, how staff interact with users, how benefits are accessed-continue to communicate distrust and diminished autonomy.

Key Evidence

- Medicalised Certification remains the gatekeeper of most entitlements. Individuals must repeatedly ˝prove˝ incapacity to maintain support. For EO survivors, parallel disability benefit systems produce inconsistent treatment and weaken shared advocacy.

- Service Interactions often signal reduced agency. Decisions are made about individuals rather than with them, particularly affecting women and those who acquired disability during adulthood.

- Community Participation is limited not by law, but by social distance, inaccessible environments, and the absence of OPD-led local support networks.

- Cost is the most immediate barrier to inclusion. Nearly half of surveyed respondents reported being unable to access services, transport, assistive devices, or rehabilitation because they cannot afford them.

- Employment remains the most visible site of stigma, driven by weak enforcement of quotas, limited reasonable accommodation, and misperceptions regarding productivity.