INTERNATIONAL DISABILITY ALLIANCE
Member organizations:
Disabled Peoples’ International, Down Syndrome International,
International Federation of Hard of Hearing People,
Inclusion International, Rehabilitation International,
World Blind Union, World Federation of the Deaf,
World Federation of the DeafBlind,
World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry,
Arab Organization of Disabled People, European Disability Forum,
Pacific Disability Forum,
Red Latinoamericana de Organizaciones No Gubernamentales
1 September 2010
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
3rd Conference of States Parties
1-2-3 September 2010
Report:
Civil society forum Co-organized by UN-DESA Secretariat of the CRPD and International Disability Alliance, 31st August 2010
Following is a record of remarks made at the first Civil Society Forum co-hosted by DESA and the International Disability Alliance. The views expressed represent the views of the speakers.
Ms. Diane Richler (IDA), Ms. Akiko Ito (DESA), and Ambassador McLay (New Zealand) welcomed the participants. Ms. Ito highlighted some recent developments such as the Inter-Agency Support Group (IASG) guidelines for UN country teams, which were recently finalized and will be adopted in the UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) framework in 2011-2012. She noted the failure of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be inclusive of persons with disabilities and informed all of an event on development Wednesday from 1:15-2:45 in Conference Room 4. DESA is promoting disability-inclusive development. In June 2010 DESA with the World Bank organized a meeting on accessibility and communication. They are increasing focus on women and girls with disabilities. As a new way to promote the rights of persons with disabilities the Civil Society Forum will be an annual event held in conjunction with the Conference of State Parties (COSP). She noted where there had been areas of cooperation to date and that there was the need for cooperation on the rights of persons with disabilities in new areas as well, such as peace and security.
Ambassador McLay welcomed participants and thanked Inclusion International and DESA for the invitation to the Forum. He emphasized the importance of article 32 and raised the issue of how it could be operationalized to deliver results. He indicated the need for the MDGs to be inclusive of persons with disabilities given that 80% of persons with disabilities live in developing countries. He indicated the need for collaboration between DPOs, NGOs, States and UN agencies, which had been crucial during negotiations of the CRPD and remained important. He challenged civil society to continue lobbying for signature and for current signatories to speed up their ratification process, and stressed the need to maintain positive momentum. He emphasized the importance of periodic State reporting and other reports to treaty bodies and the need to encourage this. He highlighted the multiple discrimination that many people with disabilities face and in particular women. He remains optimistic about what civil society can achieve.
Mr. Shuaib Chalklin, the UN special rapporteur on disability, focused his talk on article 32 and international cooperation. He reminded all of ECOSOC resolution 2008/20 outlining the responsibilities of the Special Rapporteur. His focus as stated in his first report to the Commission on Social Development in February 2010 is to encourage ratification, work for inclusion in the MDGs, work on international cooperation based on article 32, highlight the needs of persons with disabilities in humanitarian disasters and in situations of risk, and to highlight the needs of women and girls with disabilities. He reminded everyone of the obligations in article 32 and the differing level of success of countries policies on development to include persons with disabilities. He highlighted the limited success of the MDG efforts in this regard, noting by way of example the fact that many children with disabilities do not attend school.
Mr. Chalklin noted the major challenge that most people with disabilities live in the global south in extreme poverty. Yet most development spending is on exclusive development projects in which disability is only included after civil society lobbying. He noted that disability is not sufficiently considered as a human rights issue and that good governance requirements are sometimes seen as an imposition form the west. He considered that there is a global fatigue in the global disability movement weakening its capacity. Yet these challenges presented opportunities.
Regarding the IASG guidelines, he felt it would be useful if they would contain key indicators for good inclusive development. He noted that some donors have disability inclusive policies. The ratification by 90 countries provided a unique opportunity to ask for the OECD, EU and other development assistance to be inclusive. While many donors funded disability-specific projects, such as “special schools” or providing assistive devices in post-conflict countries, broader development spending should be inclusive of disability. For example, if a government provided funding for schools, they should be accessible. He highlighted the need to change the policy of the major development and donor agencies, and noted that inclusion of gender in development provided an excellent model. He provided some best practice examples such as the Japanese development agency initiative with Kenya, Malawi and South Africa to establish an independent living center in each country, which was planned to expand to other countries. He serves as an advisor for the project. The recipient countries become cost sharers in these and in the process, African people will go to Japan to study independent living and technology. He suggested that DPOs and governments develop other projects in partnership.
He highlighted the need for cooperation between IDA, IDDC, the Global Partnership for Disability and Development, and governments, to ensure inclusion of disability in the MDGs and in development generally. He suggested that to achieve broader inclusion in development, a task force should be developed with IDA, IDDC, GPDD and the IASG to develop a common agenda, which could lead to other initiatives.
He highlighted the challenge of good governance and respect of human rights and noted problems in Africa in particular. He pointed to the issue that countries prevent organizations from operating as human rights organization, including organizations of persons with disabilities. Some organizations remain silent in this and DPOs face the brunt of this. There was a greater need to strengthen the voice of persons with disabilities in the south. In addition, there was a need to share best practices. This could be an additional agenda of the proposed task force.
He introduced an initiative to create an African Disability Forum. It would provide Africans with Disabilities the platform to speak with one voice, have evidence based monitoring, and improve rights protection. He suggested that it would have an open membership, and not just be open to organizations in Africa. The proposed Forum would be a small organization, with limited staff and projects. This is still under discussion. He has engaged some leaders in Africa around this Forum. If this forum were to be established, it would need the support of the international civil society.
He recently met with Judy Heuman (U.S.) and raised the issue of women and girls with mental disabilities in Africa and asked for US support. He received excellent support from her and her colleagues. He emphasized the importance of self-representation in raising greater awareness of the conditions for women and girls with psychosocial disabilities. He raised the same issue at a meeting with the World Bank yesterday. He emphasized the areas of cooperation between IDA and himself and noted he was keen to work with all of those present on the areas of work raised today.
Judith Heuman (Special Advisor on Disability Rights for the U.S. State Department and Former World Bank Group’s first Advisor on Disability and Development) began her remarks with a reminder of the need to applaud each other for the progress made to date, which was possible from people working together and sharing information. She emphasized that disability is not a tragedy but rather a normal part of life and that everyone needed to fight to remove barriers. No country was where it should be yet on disability. She believes we will see major changes in all countries in the next twenty years, and data beginning to emerge shows that there is already a difference. She noted the importance of remembering what everyone has done effectively, never give up, and recognize that there will continue to be barriers. She emphasized the need for continued collaboration and to maintain leadership but to reach out to others.
She believes that the number of 650 million persons with disabilities worldwide is not accurate, the number is larger. We have to recognize that our ability to collaborate and work together means we will achieve progress. She is pleased to serve as Special Advisor and introduced other members of her team. Regarding U.S. ratification, the community of people with disabilities asked President Obama to ratify and he agreed to sign it in the first year. She welcomed the positive role that President Obama was taking on in the process. She noted that Secretary Clinton had been a leader in human rights and civil rights and had integrated disability in her work. Ms. Heuman anticipated that the ratification package will be presented to the president and sent to the Senate sometime this year.
The message they are working on in the State Department is inclusion of disability. Her office was integrated with labor and human rights. They are currently working on:
-The human rights report (of the U.S. Department of State): They are working to ensure that the guidance and direction going to U.S. embassies to ensure disability is appropriately integrated in the HR report. They have had a meeting with 20 civil society organizations to enable them to understand what the human rights report is.
-They are encouraging people to meet with the embassies and human rights officers about violations of people with disabilities in their respective countries
-Training and human rights – There is a three-day course on human rights (at the Department of State) that they are integrated into.
-Human rights reporters – They are training those who will produce the report on HR violations.
-Awareness raising (internal)- Many people in government and civil society don’t understand the breadth of what we are discussing in talking about disabled individuals. People understand disabilities as only visible disabilities. Many people have invisible disabilities- intellectual, mental, epilepsy, cancer, etc. When people discuss disability, it allows people to identify whether they have a disability, family members, members of the community. They have had positive uptake. Colleagues are interested in looking at what they are able to do.
-They are interested in learning about and from the work going on in other countries.
-They want to share information from what they’ve done in the last 30-40 years.
-The gender office is looking at including disabilities.
-Government grants and contracts – They are working to ensure that all grants and contracts include disability, working on specific language for grants, so it is transparent and that applicants understand what is meant by inclusion of disability. This will not happen overnight but they are working with civil society organizations, organizations that have received funding and are doing work overseas.
She noted that disability organizations could be advisors and paid for their expertise so they can be participants at the table. She introduced Mr. David Morrissey of the United States International Council on Disabilities, which has been a critical component on disability. It has not yet been that engaged in the international arena. They have been working on this, and more are becoming involved and interested.
She concluded by noting that those present all had broad visions of what the world and the societies of those present should look like, and called for continued leadership.
Next, Ms. Akiko Ito presented highlights of the Conference of States Parties and reviewed the program (available at www.un.org/disabilities). She noted that on Wednesday many of the CRPD Committee members would be present at the panels. In addition she noted that the CRPD Committee Chair would present a report during the UN agencies meeting on Friday morning (3 September 2010). She noted that the email contact information for the Secretariat of the Conference of States Parties was enable@un.org.
This was followed by discussion and comments from participants.
Ms. Tina Minkowitz, CHRUSP and WNUSP, noted that her organizations see forced treatment and deprivation of liberty happen all over the world and in the U.S. They did a report for the Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the United States (which will occur in November 2010) with other disability organizations, calling on the United States to eliminate forced treatment, eliminate institutional bias where there is relevant legislation being proposed, and other issues. She asked Ms. Heuman whether the State Department was planning to address them about the report, and noted that their recommendations and concerns were not mentioned in the State’s report that had been submitted to the Council. Regarding ratification, the last meeting was held with civil society was last December and she asked when the next meeting would take place. She asked whether Ms. Heuman’s office would share the proposed reservations and declarations with the disability community and others, and before those were sent to the Senate.
Ms. Heuman replied that there would be discussions before the package goes to the Senate and that Ms. Minkowitz would be invited to those as she had been in the past, and said they would also share the proposals with the disability community before the package went to the Senate (anticipated to occur in December). She had not yet seen the UPR report having begun in June and asked Ms. Minkowitz to email her the report and indicated that she would look at it.
Mr. Richard Rieser (UK Disabled Peoples Council) spoke of implementation of article 24. He said that the latest global monitoring report suggested that more than 40% of the children not in school are disabled children. There have been some successes but the economic crisis might be posing problems. World Vision International did an analysis of fast track countries’ plans, and disability was not really mentioned. He asked the panelists what they suggested on how to get world leaders to include disabled children more seriously in education?
Ms. Heuman noted that one of her team members will speak tomorrow or Thursday. She has started to work with the people of Department of Education. The U.S. has a new director of special education. Her objective is to look at what is going on the State Department and with USAID, she needs to understand first how U.S. dollars are spent in education so far. She doesn’t know enough yet about (the spending) at the international level. She would expect that the Secretary and others in the White House should look for opportunities for a statement on this to be made. The U.s. should look at what it was doing and the impact of what it might have.
Mr. Chalkin replied that he would speak on a roundtable on education on Wednesday 1 September 2010, and at a side event organized by the World Federation of the Deaf. In preparing for the round table, he came across a shadow report by a South African DPO on people with learning disabilities. In South Africa there were good policies but they were not working at local level because teachers and administrators are not aware. The report has gone to Geneva. He thinks UNICEF is the most aware of conditions of children with learners disabilities.
Ms. Heuman noted that this speaks to the issue of working collaboratively. It would be good to look at the work of the Scandinavians, British, New Zealanders and others that have been working on the ground. She pointed to the need for additional efforts and that some have done work to strengthen parent awareness and teacher training.
Mr. Rieser responded that he works on inclusive education and thought filming good practices would be helpful, as often one school nearby might have a good practice but that this could be unknown by schools nearby. He felt the internet could be helpful for this.
Mr. Morrissey (USICD) noted that they have a project with a U.S. university whereby they collect information and send it to countries that don’t have internet access.
Mr. Stefan Trömel (International Disability Alliance) wanted to draw attention of everyone present to the issue of the MDGs summit that will take place in a few weeks. A meeting of States had taken place earlier that day in the same room of the current meeting, to discuss the latest version of the outcome document. In the current version of the MDGs summit outcome document draft, there are only two references to persons with disabilities. One reference is now being challenged by the G77, who is proposing an alternative paragraph that would include persons with disabilities regarding education (although that alternative paragraph is being opposed by the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Russia and the EU). He requested that those present speak to the G77 and to their own governments. He suggested that colleagues to contact their missions. He called for intensifying efforts on this as soon as possible and ensuring that the MDG document takes the first step to end invisibility of persons with disabilities in the MDGs. (Note- the text of the current version of the MDGs document is included at the end of this document.)
A representative of the University of West Indies indicated that he would seek support for this. He would speak to a commission. He then highlighted a new initiative of theirs. They have been working on establishing a global disability index, to track performance of member States that have signed and ratified the CRPD. They have a detailed project proposal and have talked with the Secretariat at the U.N. They would want support from IDA and member states in the execution of such a project. There should be a mechanism ranking States according to their progress, as this would put some pressure on some people to perform. They are seeking support from the various stakeholders.
Anne Hawker (Rehabilitation International) supported what Mr. Rieser had said on the need to ensure there is ongoing inclusive education. While a number of people were starting to see the development of inclusive education, they had not enjoyed the same level of success when they got to the point of employment. It was necessary to increase efforts leading to employment at the different levels of education.
Ms. Heuman indicated the need to see what countries were doing on education leading to employment and the need for more government-to-government discussion. She noted the positive development that more groups and youth groups were organizing to put pressure on local governments. Mr. Chalklin also noted additional employment challenges. Ms. Heuman noted the efforts of the current U.S. administration to employ additional persons with disabilities. Before February 2009 there had not been adequate national data on the unemployment rate of people with disabilities but they were working to improve that.
A representative from Japan’s Council for disability policy reform indicated challenges there. Japan has a new government and created a council for disability policy reform, trying to change law and practice to be consistent with the CRPD. This includes 26 members. The majority of the council members were from the disability community, including Japan Disability Forum. They made a radical recommendation including on article 24 on education. The Japanese government had not agreed with inclusive education. But now the Cabinet office had made a radical recommendation and the government has to set up a new committee to see if the current practice is in compliance. Japan’s Ministry of education is looking at article 24.
A representative of the International Federation of Women Lawyers asked whether the Special Rapporteur had collaboration with other special Rapporteurs and other treaty monitoring bodies. She noted that the treaty bodies had general recommendations that could include disabled persons. The Committees have issued a statement on the anniversary of Security Council resolution 1325 anniversary, which could talk about disabled women. She mentioned as well the International Criminal Court victim trust fund, and asked whether discussion had yet taken place between the disability community and persons involved in that. She noted that this could be helpful regarding civilian rehabilitation. Her organization was willing to provide assistance.
Mr. Chalklin noted that he could not attend a recent meeting of all of the Special Rapporteurs in June 2010 in Geneva because of visa problems. He noted that the Special Rapporteur on violence against women was also South African but they had not yet met. On the question of women with psychosocial disabilities and post conflict situations like Congo, that was one area he would discuss with the Special Rapporteur on Violence against women. He does not yet have information on the ICC victim trust fund.
Ms. Heuman noted that it was important for groups like theirs to discuss this. Disabled girls and women should be included. The same had occurred with the HIV/AIDS discussion. It was an issue of visibility, and the stigma of disability, even when disability was caused by violence.
Ms. Tina Minkowitz noted that there were problems with the IASG guidelines that had been mentioned and that there had not been wide consultation with DPOs in their drafting. She noted that the OHCHR document on monitoring the CRPD was in her view much better (Monitoring the Convention on the Rights of Persons with disability: Guidance for HR Monitors (April 2010)).
Mr. Trömel noted that IDA has started since early last year to monitor not only the functioning of the CRPD Committee but also had been working to influence the work of other treaty bodies. IDA had been working to ensure that other treaty bodies pay more attention to the rights of persons with disabilities, but such attention was not always consistent with the CRPD. The other treaty bodies have not always endorsed the highest standards regarding the rights of persons with disabilities. The lack of attention by other treaty bodies is linked to the little involvement of national DPOs in the reporting to other treaty bodies. IDA was trying to build capacity on CRPD Committee reporting, and hoped that DPOs prepare their own reports on other treaty bodies or joined other coalitions that should result in increased attention paid by other treaty bodies. IDA was playing an increased attention to the work of the other special rapporteurs. Now a Human Rights Council resolution has asked all of the Special Rapporteurs to mainstream disability, some are doing it, while others are not doing it at a good level yet, such as the Special Rapporteur on violence against women.
Mr. Lauro de Leon Purcil (CRPD Committee candidate from the Philippines) emphasized the need to increase attention to article 4 (3) as a way to address the invisibility of persons with disability in efforts on international cooperation.
Myra Kovary of the International Network of Women with Disabilities noted that they had sent a letter to the SR on violence against women, and a document reviewing concerns on the Beijing to Commission on the Status of Women, as well as a letter to the CEDAW committee.
A representative of the Asian Peoples Disability Alliance emphasized the need for information sharing and a focus on minorities within communities.
Ms. Diane Richler (International Disability Alliance) noted that IDA had started initial work on developing implementation guidelines on the CRPD. In addition IDA had been working on some of the themes they hoped would be addressed at the conference. Among such issues was the need for a UN disability rights fund. IDA encouraged the UN agencies to report on work done to implement the conference. The recent Human Rights Council resolution had requested OHCHR to prepare a study on the role of international cooperation in the implementation of the convention. IDA was requesting that the COP recommend to the General Assembly a revision of the mandate of the existing UN voluntary fund on disability. IDA encouraged the COP to call on States that had not yet ratified to do so. IDA encouraged recognition of persons with disabilities in the MDGs summit outcome document.
Mr. Rieser added that best practices on disability history month should be shared and that there were eight States that do this mandatorily and information could be shared on this.
The meeting ended with announcements of side events to be held during the conference.
Fonte: IDA
