Sadaqah for the Blessing of Mobility: Flood Relief Through the Lens of Disability

When floods come, people are told to leave quickly. Move to higher ground. Carry your children. Take what you can. Reach the road before the water rises. For many families, this is difficult. For a person with a disability, it can be impossible.

This is the part of flood relief that is rarely spoken about. We talk about food packs, tents, rescue boats, damaged homes, lost crops, and clean water. All of these are urgent. All of them save lives. But there is another question hidden inside every flood emergency: what happens to the person who cannot run, cannot climb, cannot walk through mud, cannot sit in a rescue boat without support, or cannot leave the house unless someone carries them?

In deep rural areas and villages, this question becomes even more painful. Homes are often built in low lying areas. Roads are narrow or broken. Transport is limited. Medical support is far away. When water rises at night, families do not get time to make careful decisions. They are pushed into panic. A mother may have to carry one child while trying to protect another. A son may leave to search for help while his disabled father waits inside. A family may place an elderly parent on a charpai, hoping the water will not rise further. Sometimes, when they return, that person is no longer there.

These stories are rarely recorded properly. They do not always appear in official reports. They may not be counted separately in relief data. But in many villages, people understand this reality quietly. During disasters, people with disabilities are often among the first to be trapped and among the last to be reached.

The 2022 floods in Pakistan showed how large this kind of disaster can become. According to the World Bank’s Post Disaster Needs Assessment, around 33 million people were affected, nearly 8 million were displaced, and around one third of the country was under water. The same assessment reported more than 1,730 deaths and damage to nearly 2.2 million houses.

Now look at those numbers through the lens of disability. The World Health Organization estimates that about 1.3 billion people worldwide experience significant disability, which is around 16 percent of the global population. If even a similar share existed among flood affected communities in Pakistan, it means that millions of people affected by the floods may have had some form of disability, mobility limitation, chronic illness, injury, or age related dependence. The exact number is difficult to know because disability data is often limited and underreported, but the lack of clear numbers should not make the suffering invisible.

Globally, disaster research has repeatedly shown that persons with disabilities face higher risks during emergencies. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has stated that persons with disabilities can be killed at a rate two to four times higher than the general population in some disasters. This is not only because of the disaster itself. It is also because rescue systems, shelters, transport, communication, and relief planning often do not include the needs of people who cannot move easily.

This is why flood relief cannot only be measured by how many ration bags were delivered. A ration bag matters, but it does not answer every need. If a person cannot reach the distribution point, how will they receive food? If a wheelchair is broken or washed away, how will they reach a medical camp? If a child with a physical disability is stuck inside a damaged home, how will they return to school? If an elderly woman cannot walk through mud, how will she use a temporary shelter, toilet, or health facility safely?

For people with disabilities, mobility is not a comfort. It is survival.

This is also where the idea of Sadaqah becomes deeply personal. People give Sadaqah for many reasons: for safety, for health, for protection, for gratitude, for ease in hardship, and for the wellbeing of their families. We give because we recognise that what we have is a blessing. But one blessing is so ordinary to us that we often forget to notice it: the ability to stand on our own feet and move.

To have feet that carry us, legs that support us, and a body that allows us to walk out of danger is a gift. We use this gift every day without thinking. We walk to the kitchen, step outside the home, go to work, visit family, attend school, stand in a line, move away from danger, and return safely. In a flood, this blessing becomes even more visible. The person who can walk has a chance to escape. The person who cannot walk may have to wait for someone else to save them.

So perhaps one of the most meaningful forms of Sadaqah is the Sadaqah of mobility: giving from the blessing of our own movement to help someone else move.

This does not have to be understood in a complicated way. It is simple. If we are grateful for our health, we can support someone whose health has limited their independence. If we are grateful that our feet carry us, we can help provide mobility to someone who cannot move without assistance. If we are grateful that we can leave a dangerous place in an emergency, we can help make sure another person is not left behind when disaster comes.

This perspective changes the meaning of flood relief. It reminds us that aid is not only about what people need to eat or where they need to sleep. It is also about whether they can reach help in the first place. A person who cannot move may not be able to stand in the food line, reach the rescue point, access clean water, or visit a doctor. Without mobility, even available aid can remain out of reach.

During floods, many people lose the very things that help them function every day. Wheelchairs are damaged by water. Crutches are washed away. Medicines are lost. Therapy stops. Hospitals become unreachable. Caregivers are overwhelmed. A person who was already dependent before the disaster may become completely isolated after it. In some cases, new disabilities are also created during the disaster itself through injuries, collapsing roofs, falling walls, infections, untreated wounds, and unsafe evacuation.

If flood relief ignores disability, it unintentionally helps only those who are able to reach help. That is not enough. True relief must ask who is missing from the line. Who could not come to the camp? Who was left inside the house? Who was unable to call loudly enough for help? Who survived the flood but lost independence afterward?

This is the unique angle that must become part of disaster response. Flood recovery is not complete until people with disabilities are included in rescue, relief, rehabilitation, and rebuilding. It is not enough to say that aid reached a village. We must ask whether it reached the person who could not leave their bed, the child who could not walk through water, the mother using a wheelchair, the elderly man with paralysis, and the family caring for someone with severe physical limitations.

In this wider conversation, Niaz Support fits naturally as one example of disability focused relief. Its work addresses a gap that general aid often misses: mobility. By providing customised wheelchairs and mobility support, especially for people living in difficult environments, Niaz Support helps restore movement, access, and dignity. In flood affected or low resource communities, this kind of support can help someone reach food, attend medical appointments, move safely at home, return to school, and reduce the burden on caregivers.

A wheelchair may look like a single item, but for a person who has been trapped indoors, it can become the difference between dependence and dignity. It can mean being able to leave a damaged home. It can mean not being left behind during the next emergency. It can mean that a family no longer has to choose between saving one person and searching for help for everyone else.

This is what thoughtful Sadaqah can do. It can move beyond a standard package and respond to a specific human need. It can see the person behind the disaster. It can recognise that one family needs food, another needs shelter, another needs medicine, and another needs the ability to move before they can access any of these things.

Sadaqah Jariyah also has a role here. Long term charity in disaster recovery should include accessible housing, safer paths, inclusive shelters, clean water points that disabled people can reach, medical rehabilitation, assistive devices, and community level planning for those who cannot evacuate on their own. A rebuilt village that still excludes people with disabilities is not fully rebuilt. A relief system that only works for the physically strong is not truly humane.

Floods expose the weaknesses that already exist in society. If people with disabilities are invisible before a disaster, they become more vulnerable during it. If villages do not have accessible roads, floods make movement almost impossible. If poor families cannot afford wheelchairs or medical support in normal times, a flood can push them into complete helplessness. This is why disability inclusion is not a side issue. It is central to disaster relief.

The power of Sadaqah in flood recovery is not only in how quickly it moves. Its real power is in how deeply it sees. It asks us to look beyond the most visible suffering and notice the people who are quiet, hidden, dependent, or physically unable to reach help. It asks donors, organisations, and communities to think not only about survival, but also about dignity.

Flood relief through the lens of disability and mobility gives us a different understanding of recovery. It reminds us that a family is not truly safe if one member cannot escape. A village is not truly served if its disabled residents cannot reach aid. A disaster response is not truly successful if it counts food packs but forgets the people who could not stand in line to receive them.

Food saves lives. Water prevents disease. Shelter protects families. But mobility gives a person access to all three.

That is why giving Sadaqah for mobility is not a small act. It is a way of giving thanks for the blessing of our own movement by helping someone else regain theirs. It reaches people who are often left behind. It restores dignity where disaster has created dependence. And it reminds us that the most powerful charity is not only the one that reaches many people, but the one that reaches the people no one else remembered.