Inclusion Without Limits   3 min Nujeen Mustafa: “I Escaped a War in a Wheelchair”

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA estimates that 17 percent of Syrians are disabled, most of whom are deprived from adequate means of subsistence (Syrian Arab Republic: Humanitarian Response Priorities Report, January 2025). Upon the outbreak of the war in Syria, people with disabilities were among the most vulnerable. In a poignant account, Nujeen Mustafa recounts her life trajectory and journey from her native Syria to Germany on a wheelchair, when the daily challenges of living with a disability took new forms.


 

What did your day look like when you were 10 years old?

You probably had an annoying alarm that woke you up togo to school. You heard a lecture from your parents about what’s healthy to have for breakfast and how you’re thin and should eat more veggies to become a strong boy/girl.

At school, you found the lessons boring and so acted out with your friends and couldn’t wait for school to be over so that you could go home.

When you went back home, you’d find lunch, but also homework waiting for you. And right when it was about to get fun, you were ordered to bed because “you have school tomorrow”.

I had none of that. No alarm, no school, no homework and no opportunity to hang out. That’s what tends to happen when you’re disabled and live in a fifth-floor apartment in a building with no elevator. The message was very clear – educating people with disabilities or ensuring that they have a good quality of life wasn’t seen as necessary. In short, people like me did not matter.

That’s what having a disability meant for me back in Syria, and I know that this was the case for so many others.

My daily life in Syria

So, this may leave you asking, what was I doing all day?

Well, being the stubborn bunch that we are, my siblings insisted that I should learn to read and write in Arabic, regardless of whether I would ever sit inside a classroom or not.

Cue the writing exercises and lots of reading.

I personally enjoyed the latter far more then than the former.

Growing up, TV and books became my school, the window I had on the outside world.  That’s also how I learned English.

My life was not perfect, but I loved it.

A peace shattered

When I was 12, the revolution started in my country.  At first, we were full of hope that change was on the way, that we would be free of the tyranny that had ruled our country for decades.

The dream turned into a nightmare as cities were bombed one after another from the air and on the ground.  Eventually it was Aleppo’s turn.

Helicopters hovered overhead, bombing nearby neighbourhoods. That was in addition to the regular sounds of bangs that we would hear from the countryside.

Soon I learned to never go to the balcony or look up.  The best I could hope for is that we would still have electricity, so that I could drown out the sounds of what was happening by turning up the volume of the TV.

Up until this point, my disability had been something that I navigated with a lot of success. I’d managed to make the best of unusual and unfavourable circumstances.

This time, there was nothing that I could do. I came face-to-face with the fact that me being the way I was meant that I couldn’t run and hide or find shelter as quickly as the other people. I couldn’t be left alone either, so this also meant that members of my family were at high risk of injury, or even worse.

I was one of the fortunate ones who had a brother who could carry me down five flights of stairs. Many others didn’t have such luck.  

Displacement

We first became internally displaced.  Then, as time went on, we realised that if we wanted to have a future at all, away from bombs and destruction, we had to leave Syria.

My sister and I went on a 3500-mile journey from Syria which included eight country borders and a dangerous boat journey from Turkey to Greece.

You might think that after this stage the journey was easier. But, though the greatest danger to our lives have passed, the rest of the way presented its own challenges.

The geographical terrain was often very rough and not suitable for wheelchair.  A consequence of this was that I was pushed, pulled and carried throughout various stages of the journey. That was physically and psychologically daunting for everyone in our group, especially my sister. This did not deter us, however, and we finally made it to Germany.

That was 10 years ago.  Today, I can proudly announce that I have completed my secondary education. My next goal is to go to college. My life is now the life of a regular recent graduate, looking for internships and hoping to gain some practical knowledge.

What we can do better

One of the things that has stayed with me from that time is the realisation that refugee camps and crisis response initiatives are not accessible or inclusive.

I couldn’t stay at the main refugee camp in Greece because the restroom was not accessible and I couldn’t use it.  My family and I had to relocate to a secondary camp that had a restroom that I could use.   Even that was only possible because I had my own walker – not because it was wheelchair or disability friendly in any way.  It was, in fact, the opposite.  Our tent was set up in the section where the ground was gravel, so it was very hard to push a wheelchair.

The lack of accessibility is particularly shocking and saddening because refugees are often fleeing from situations of war and conflict.  These are circumstances in which the probability of acquiring a disability becomes much higher – people lose limbs, hearing, sight, mobility etc.

Unfortunately, this problem is nothing new.  People with disabilities are forgotten about in times of peace, so what do we expect would happen in times of war?

If we want that to change, we need to act, and it starts at home.

There need to be a push for the destigmatisation of disability through access to information and support from experts.  Campaigns and initiatives to raise social awareness could help shift the social perception of a disability from being a death sentence to an existence with a real life and a future.   Slight changes can and should be accommodated.

Of course, this positive change cannot be brought about without systematic and active support from governments and decision makers.   My family was very supportive of me, but there was a limit to what they could do when there were neither infrastructure nor institutions that cared about helping me achieve my full potential.

This is where an active effort needs to be made to listen and consult with people with disabilities and their representative organisations, as they are the best equipped to identify and address gaps in accessibility and inclusion.

Government and decisionmakers must establish continuous contact with, and links, to people with disabilities and their representative organisations.

People with disabilities must have a seat at the table in all aspects of decision-making, planning and implementation of governmental policies, initiatives and plans.

Through all these steps, I hope that we can help our societies see disability and the people who have them in a different, more positive light, and give people with disabilities the opportunities that they need and deserve to shine.

 

February 2026