Disabled Persons – Advocacy for Rights – UN Convention – Gender
Author: Womens UN Report Network
Date: November 22, 2010
WUNRN
DISABLED WOMEN & GIRLS
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CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF PERSONS
WITH DISABILITIES
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Action
on Behalf of Persons with Disabilities Will Be Key to Success of Efforts to
Reduce Poverty & Achieve Development Goals, says UN High Commissioner
for Human Rights
The following statement was issued by the UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights Navi Pillay on the occasion of the International Day of Persons with
Disabilities
GENEVA (3 December 2010) – “There are believed to be some 650 million people
with disabilities in the world today – around 10 percent of the world’s
population. Of these, some 426 million are living below the poverty line in
developing countries.
The link between poverty and disabilities is stark. The participation in the
labour force of persons with disabilities is significantly lower than for those
who do not have any disability. This is not only detrimental to the rights and
quality of life of the individuals concerned, it is also damaging to the
economy and to the family, the community and society at large. It makes no
sense to leave such a huge, potentially productive, group of people on the
economic sidelines.
“Efforts to reduce poverty – and to achieve the Millennium Development
Goals, which include halving poverty – will be severely hampered if efforts to
improve the situation of hundreds of millions of people living with disabilities
are not pursued with vigour.
Reducing child mortality and increasing access to health are other
Millennium Development Goals which will be hard to achieve, if their impact on
persons with disabilities is not given special attention.
To some extent this has been recognized. The Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) came into force in May 2008. It was the first
new human rights convention of the 21st Century. It took the shortest time to
develop and unprecedented numbers of NGOs, persons with disabilities and their
organizations were involved in the negotiations. The CRPD would have been very
different without their contribution. States have been signing and ratifying it
at a faster rate than any other Convention ever – in belated recognition of its
importance.
In all, by 1 December this year, 147 States have signed the Convention, of
which 96 – half the world’s States — have taken the ultimate step of
ratification. This is enabling the important Committee which monitors the
implementation of the Convention to expand to 18 persons on 1 January 2011.
This will give it broader representation, and facilitate its task when it
begins examining the record of individual States, measured against their
obligations under the Convention.
The Convention makes it clear that persons with disabilities have the same
rights as everyone else. This is not a matter of charity, or choice. They are
entitled to the same rights to key services such as health and education, the
same right to earn a living and not to be discriminated against in any way.
Yet we are still a long way from achieving this.
According to UNESCO, around 75 million children are not attending primary
school. One third of them are children with disabilities. This is one of many
areas where faster progress is vital, if the next generation of persons with
disabilities is to suffer fewer disadvantages than their predecessors.
Education is the key to so much else.
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