The UN Advocates for the Disabled, The US Should Do The Same

Today is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities celebrating the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The Convention and its Optional Protocol were adopted in late 2006 as a treaty whose provisions are considered binding on the member countries who sign it.

The Convention recognizes the plight of the world’s 650 million people with disabilities and is designed to level the playing field so that they, irrespective of their geographical location, might take their rightful place in mainstream society.

So far, 136 of the world’s 192 countries have signed on.

It would be nice if the US signed on—soon.

Why the US hasn’t signed on is pretty much a mystery to most people, especially because the Convention was partially inspired by the Americans with Disabilities Act and complements ADA quite well.

In the developed world, social and legal recognition of people with disabilities is far advanced.

Even so, major blind spots abound.            

One: In the two-year run-up to last month’s US elections, people with disabilities were deeply frustrated that they, the largest minority group in the country, were ignored on the national stage. Ironically, when Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin, the mother and aunt of children with disabilities, finally broke the national silence, her advocacy potential was quickly overwhelmed by partisan astonishment that someone other than a Democrat had the temerity to acknowledge people with disabilities. Hence, a potentiality powerful moment of behalf of disability issues was wasted.

Two: Other less visible, but no less important problems for people with disabilities exist. In-utero genetic testing already detects scores of anomalies that result in some form of disability discrimination. Given powerful social pressures for conformity and perfection, many pregnancies revealing genetic irregularity are routinely terminated.

Three: People with disabilities are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the growing utilitarian nature of medical care. Facing the reality of a large disconnect between available resources and patients’ expensive treatment needs, people with disabilities are likely to be among the first victims who will be pressured or made to succumb to euthanasia, an idea that is rapidly gaining in acceptance - both here and abroad.

Celebrating the Convention today reaffirms our commitment to fundamental principles of dignity and justice and to ensure that the Convention becomes more than a paper tiger.

Let’s encourage our elected representatives in Congress to consider signing the Convention, not only as an acknowledgement of the needs and rights of Americans with disabilities, but also as an exemplar of US leadership on behalf of the world’s 650 million disabled.

When Disability is a Death Sentence - Literally

In the most accurate sense of what disability means, skin color is not often an issue that jumps out at us from the news media. While we still live, unfortunately, in a world where skin color can often lead to prejudice, oppression, and even abuse, these evils are rarely provoked because of "skin color disability."

However, there is at least one instance where skin color does mean disability in the medical sense: Albinism. People with albinism inherit a genetic disorder characterized by the presence of little, if any, melanin and other skin pigmentation in their skin. They are especially susceptible to severe skin damage; most often skin cancer from exposure to the sun. Many have characteristic vision problems.

A medical disability, no question.

However, albinism is often also a difficult social disability in societies where physical appearance can mean the difference between being included or excluded based on a person’s physical characteristics.

Such is the case in Africa and many other developing countries, where people with albinism are seen, depending on who you are talking to, as either a curse or a blessing. Either way, Africans with albinism lose.

Yesterdays New York Times carried a heartbreaking story from Tanzania documenting the increased murder of Tanzanians with albinism because their body parts are prized for witchcraft potions.

Disability as death sentence.

Literally.

Difficult enough that you live in a part of the world where your life expectancy is pitifully short (even by African standards) because there’s no money for sunscreen lotion (to say nothing of no education on how to manage the condition).

Difficult enough that your very visible medical condition marks you not as a human being, but often as the ingredient of some allegedly magic brew.

Difficult enough that you are an economic prize – but only after you have been mutilated or killed for your precious body parts.

Hats off to the Tanzanian Government, which has acknowledged the problem. They’ve taken some very aggressive steps to combat this horror – police protection, and the appointment of a person with albinism to the national government, for example.

The Tanzanians could go much further, though. 

How about the Tanzanian Government continues its good-faith efforts by signing the newly ratified UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities? This ground-breaking international human rights agreement was meant to address exactly this kind of disregard for human dignity.

Let's hope it does so.

This sad and horrific story, at the very least, reminds us that we obviously have much work to do wherever disability prejudice is found.

Well Deserved Celebration in the UN General Assembly

Monday’s celebration at the UN was all that it should have been. As I noted last week, we gathered to celebrate the adoption into force of the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

The General Assembly was alive with as diverse a group of people as you’re ever likely to see: Not only were they diverse in terms of their ethnicity, gender, national affiliation, political stripe, and dress. They also steered wheelchairs and wielded white canes. There were silent (but often highly animated) sign-language conversations. Personal caregivers hovered when needed, but slipped quietly out of sight when they weren’t. The documents table groaned under a mountain of books and handouts in Braille.

Promptly at 1.15, Akiko Ito, Chief of the Secretariat of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, called the event to order.

Highlights included the address of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and that of UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Kyung-wha Kang.

Other messages were delivered by H.R.H. Prince Ra’ad Bin Zeid (Jordan), Ms. Vivian Fernández de Torríjos, (First Lady, Panama), and Ms. Sue Van der Merwe, (Deputy Minister, Foreign Affairs, South Africa).

Other high-level officials from Mexico, Hungary, Bangladesh, Spain, as well as several from international disability organizations, also participated.

An exciting, energizing day.

Now it’s time to roll up our sleeves and to turn CRPD from an international agreement into and international reality-–in every one of the 192 countries that call the UN home.

UN Takes on Disability Worldwide

After expending enormous amounts of energy and time (since 1982), there will be a lot of backslapping and celebration at the United Nations this coming Monday.

And for good reason:

In a two-hour ceremony to be headlined by UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, the UN will celebrate the formal adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

A big deal? You bet.

Here’s why. The Convention is regarded as the first new human rights treaty of this century, and is the definitive international document protecting the rights of people with disabilities around the world – all 650 million of them.

Remember, we in the developed world often assume that the rights of people with disabilities are protected. That’s true – but often only to a point, as I’ve pointed out here many times.

However, in most places in the world, people with disabilities are denied even the most basic human rights of survival, nourishment, care, education, and a host of other things that we take for granted.

Perhaps a few facts will help:

• Eighty per cent of persons with disabilities live in developing countries
  
• 20 per cent of the world's poorest people have some kind of disability, and tend to be regarded in their own communities as the most disadvantaged
  
• Women and girls with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to abuse
  
• Ninety per cent of children with disabilities in developing countries do not attend school
  
• The global literacy rate for adults with disabilities is as low as 3 per cent, and 1 per cent for women with disabilities
  
• For every child killed in warfare, three are injured and acquire a permanent form of disability
  
• Persons with disabilities are more likely to be victims of violence or rape and less likely to obtain police intervention, legal protection, or preventive care.
  

I think, then, that Secretary General Moon is right when he notes that: 

“It is a historic moment in our quest for realization of the universal human rights for all persons, creating a fully inclusive society for all.”

Added my colleague Akiko Ito, Chief of the Secretariat of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the UN Focal Point on Disability:

“It had been argued that persons with disabilities were covered by existing human rights treaties, but the reality was very different. Persons with disabilities have routinely suffered discrimination in the job market, in schools and in receiving public services.  This Convention will make sure that these people will no longer be ignored.”

Signatory countries to the convention pledge to enact their own disability laws and measures to improve disability rights while simultaneously beginning to eliminate discriminatory legislation, customs, and other practices that negatively impact their citizens with disabilities.

I’ll be in the General Assembly audience to add my congratulations.