U.N. General Assembly Approves International Disability Rights
Treaty
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
December 13,
2006
UNITED NATIONS--In a consensus vote Wednesday, the United Nations
General Assembly approved its first ever global treaty to protect the rights of
the world's 650 people with disabilities.
U.N. member nations will be able to sign onto the Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities beginning on March 30 of next year. The
treaty, which is being hailed as the first U.N. human rights treaty in the 21st
century, will come into force once 20 nations have ratified it.
"Attitudes need to change. Societies need to be more inclusive and
accessible and persons with disabilities need to be more empowered," said New
Zealand's U.N. Ambassador Don MacKay, who chaired the ad hoc committee that
drafted the convention.
For more than five years, delegates from over 100 countries worked with
hundreds of representatives from non-governmental disability organizations to
draft and then negotiate many details of the treaty.
The final version of the "Comprehensive and Integral International
Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities" has 40 articles addressing such issues as a right to be free from
forced institutionalization; to own and inherit property; participate in public
and cultural life; receive an adequate standard of living; have access to
affordable equipment; and protection of privacy. It also calls for eliminating
barriers to employment, the environment, transportation, public facilities and
communication, and for developing countries to receive help in implementing the
treaty.
The United States will likely not be one of those countries signing on
to the convention.
The Bush administration announced in June of 2003 that the U.S. would
not sign any international treaty protecting people with disabilities from
discrimination. Administration officials said national laws, such as the 1990
Americans with Disabilities Act, should cover such rights. While the U.S. would
support the work of the panel, the administration said it would not sign any
document that could be legally binding.
Related:
"U.N. approves disabled convention" (CNN)
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/12/13/un.disabled.ap/
Convention
on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (United Nations)
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/enable/rights/convtexte.htm
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Reproduced here under special arrangement
with Inclusion Daily Express international disability rights news service.
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