SIRA — Disability-Led Digital Assessment Tool for Humanitarian Crises in Mozambique

Mozambique's Cabo Delgado province has been convulsed by conflict since 2017, displacing more than 425,000 people, with almost no reliable data on disability prevalence among the displaced.

SIRA (Survey for Inclusive Rapid Assessment), an open-source, screen-reader-accessible digital survey combining the Washington Group disability screening questions with open-ended interviews and referral pathways, was co-created with FAMOD (Mozambique's national forum of disabled people's organisations) and the Netherlands' Design Innovation Group, under Light for the World's Elrha-funded 'Data That Matters' project. FAMOD's own Disability Inclusion Facilitators shaped the wording and led field testing.

Field testing in 2023-2024 assessed more than 2,400 people initially and over 1,500 households in Cabo Delgado, finding disability prevalence of up to 30% when psychosocial conditions are included — far above the 16% global estimate typically used in planning, reaching 70% among people over 50.

The findings informed Mozambique's 2025 humanitarian response plan, but SIRA remains a single-region field test: no independent academic evaluation has been published, and whether it is adopted as a standard tool beyond Cabo Delgado remains to be seen.