Just like any other population caught up in a war zone, people with disabilities suffer displacement, injury, and trauma. About 6.5 million of the 43.51 million people who have been displaced due to conflict live with a disability. Yet in conflict, when the social fabric is vulnerable and resources are limited, people with disabilities face increased violence while their protection needs often go ignored.

Emma Sulkowicz, a senior visual arts major at Columbia University, has been the frontwoman for the school’s mishandling of sexual assault on campus ever since she released her name to the press last spring.

Irom Sharmila, 42, has long advocated for the repeal of India’s Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, or AFSPA, which gives the Indian army legal immunity for various brutal actions. She has been arrested again and again since starting a hunger strike in November 2000. “I have spent 14 years of my life chewing my tongue just for violence on all sides to end,” she has said.

A young woman seems to have attached herself to me one day at Zaatari, a refugee camp holding at least 120,000 Syrians in the middle of the Jordanian desert. Her name is Abeer and she is the less obviously beautiful, older sister to a 16-year-old girl who has been married off to a much-older Libyan food distributor. He gave the girl a watch, perfume, and water when they met.