Giles Duley has dedicated his work as a photographer to documenting the impacts of war. He himself was seriously wounded in Afghanistan and continues to fight on all fronts to heal his own wounds and those of others.
“The process to actually support people with disabilities in conflict and peacebuilding situations has not even begun,” he said. UN News. “Every day of my life I am on the front lines – in war zones and humanitarian crises – and I see people living in terrible situations in homemade tents. I see people who cannot access toilets. I see people who cannot escape bombing. I see people trapped in their homes, who have to use toilets as shelter because they cannot access underground shelters.”
As a Global Defender, he said, his mission was to honor the responsibility entrusted to him to those whose lives he has documented for decades. “When I photograph someone in a war zone… I’m always told: Share this story with leaders. But the opportunities to do so were never fully exploited.”
‘I wanted to inspire myself, not inspire others’
“I didn’t expect that in my three years here everything would change. What I expected was that people would listen, and that’s where I feel like I failed and that’s where I feel like the system failed,” he said.
“Too often, when I was invited to speak, all people wanted me to do was tell them my history. “They asked me to inspire people.”
Giles Duley began his career as a music photographer, photographing artists such as Mariah Carey, Oasis and Lenny Kravitz. In 2000, his image of Marilyn Manson was among the 100 best rock photographs of all time. But then he moved on to documentary work. In 2011, while working in Afghanistan, he was seriously injured by an improvised explosive device and lost both legs and an arm. In 2012, he had returned to work.
“I shouldn’t be here to inspire others,” he said. “I want to be inspired by able-bodied people who strive to truly impact the lives of those living with disabilities, to truly help them break down the barriers that create change.”
Too often, he warned, people with disabilities are included symbolically, not substantively. “I’ve been to a lot of conferences where on stage there will be someone who is a landmine victim or a survivor of sexual violence… and over and over again it’s performative. Everyone applauds, everyone says ‘I’m really inspired’… but how often do those people get involved in the conversation about real policy change?”
This week, Mr. Duley helped open Go ahead, NOT fragmenteda UN exhibition on survivors, deminers and communities affected by explosive devices. Several of his photographs are currently exhibited at the Headquarters. He shared the stories behind some of them.
A Giles Duley photo of Chad.
Chad: crawling to safety
One photograph shows a woman named Nawali, a teacher and activist from a village near the border between Sudan and Chad. Disabled by polio as a child, she had built a fiercely independent life. But when his village was attacked, “his wheelchair was destroyed and he literally had to crawl to safety in Chad.”
When Mr. Duley met her in a displaced persons camp, she was immobile and living in a tent. The woman who had once led a full professional life now had to crawl to the bathrooms, something degrading and dangerous, with risks of assault.
“No agency had provided that wheelchair,” he said. Staff told her she was not registered because “there were no experts to decide who had disabilities.” He added dryly: “Maybe someone crawling on their hands next to them maybe didn’t need an expert.”
Ukraine: “We have been giving him sweets”
In eastern Ukraine, he photographed Julia, a young woman with severe cerebral palsy. At the beginning of the large-scale invasion, his parents were detained. Her mother repeatedly pleaded to be released, knowing that her daughter could not feed herself.
When the mother finally returned home, the soldiers “smiled sarcastically and said, ‘Don’t worry. We’ve been taking care of her. We’ve been giving her candy.'”
Once inside, he found Julia naked on the bed, covered in candy wrappers. “Her teeth have fallen out. Her hair has fallen out… the stress has made her physically ill,” Duley said. “This is the reality of people living with disabilities in conflict situations.”
Julia is 32 years old and has cerebral palsy. When her village in southern Ukraine was occupied by Russian forces, her parents (a teacher and a mayor) were attacked and harassed.
Gaza: a life interrupted
He also spoke about Amro, a Gaza boy who lost a leg after being shot by a sniper during the 2018-19 border protests. More than 200 Palestinians were killed during the weekly demonstrations.
After surgery and a difficult evacuation, Amro remained inside his family’s apartment for two years. “He didn’t want to go out…because he felt like people would judge him,” Duley recalled. “It had been forgotten.”
Mr. Duley visited him frequently, cooked with the boy and finally convinced him to go for coffee on the beach. “Sometimes it’s these small gestures of kindness and time that can change someone’s life.”
After the Hamas-led attacks on October 7 in southern Israel and the subsequent offensive in Gaza, he heard from the family for the last time: How can we escape? “I don’t know what happened to that family,” he said quietly.
‘Stop seeing the disability first’
Despite decades of advocacy, Duley said, systemic inaction persists due to stigma and discomfort. After his own injury, “often people wouldn’t even talk to me… A taxi driver might show up and ask the person behind me where I want to go.”
It has urged media and communications professionals to rethink how they represent disability. “Every time I’m interviewed, the first thing they want to talk about is what happened to me more than 10 years ago. In no other situation would I ask someone about their worst experience from a decade ago… I want people to talk about my work.”
People with disabilities, he said, often feel pressure to appear endlessly resilient. In humanitarian zones, he was often given “wounded lists” to guide his photographs. “Before the name of the person, many times I had a list… he is an amputee, he has a facial injury… I would tear that sheet.
“Tell me about the family you know that always makes you laugh. Tell me about the family that always feeds you so much you can’t leave. Tell me about the family that keeps you up at night. That list will be completely different than the original list.”
Mykhailo “Misha” Iliev, boss and owner of the bomb-sniffing demining dog, with Giles Duley, United Nations Global Advocate
Forgotten in crisis
He emphasized that disability is not a monolithic experience. People with mental health problems and invisible disabilities face different risks. And wheelchair accessibility, while vital, is only one part of true inclusion.
Women with disabilities, she said, face “greater challenges as, unfortunately, women do in most aspects of life”: limited access to bathrooms, greater stigmatization. Mothers caring for children with disabilities may not be able to leave home to access help.
My dream is simply that everyone has the same opportunity that I had.
“In crises, in wars, in humanitarian disasters, these people become more vulnerable and often more forgotten,” he said. “It’s just about understanding their needs, which will allow them to have the same rights.”
Equal opportunities
His final message to world leaders is based on his own recovery. “I had incredible support… and now I live the life I could dream of. I travel, I do the work I’m passionate about, I live independently,” she said. But that, he insisted, “should be the right of all disabled people: we just need to be seen as someone who needs a different set of support to enable self-empowerment.
“My dream is simply for everyone to have the same opportunities that I had.”
He recalled his return to Afghanistan after his injury, where he photographed a seven-year-old boy who had stepped on a land mine. “I remember looking at it and thinking: why does a kid on the way to school have to go through what I go through every day of my life?
“If my work means that a child… has the opportunity to live in peace or to rebuild his life after war, my life will have meant something.”