TLM Welcomes UN’s Convention on rights of people with disabilities

‘Disabled people comprise one of the largest single groups of excluded and chronically poor people in the developing world.’ DFID practice paper 2007.

The UN’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities came into force on 3 May. This is excellent news for the world’s 650 million disabled people. It is estimated that about 10 per cent of the world's population lives with some sort of disability - making disabled people the world's largest minority. And the World Bank estimates that 20 per cent of the poorest people on the planet have a disability.

The convention also gives new hope to the millions of people around the world disabled by leprosy who have experienced a double discrimination; they have the disease and the disabilities associated with it. In many cases leprosy and its disabilities can lead to loss of work, family, community or marriage prospects.

The Convention covers issues of equal political rights, employment, education, participation in political and public life and equal legal rights. The Convention could only come into force when a total of 20 countries had ratified it, so Ecuador’s finalisation of this process on 3 April was very significant, being the 20th country to do so.

The implications for people affected by leprosy are significant for Ecuador itself which, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), has an annual new case rate of 95 people. Over half of the first 20 countries to ratify the Convention are affected by leprosy, including India, which has over 130,000 new cases per year, more than half of all new cases detected worldwide. A further 106 countries, including the UK, have signed the Convention to say they intend to take the formal step of ratification since the UN General Assembly adopted it at the end of 2006. The UN is now strongly encouraging all of these countries to complete the process of ratifying the Convention.

Bringing the Convention into force on 3 May signifies a welcome and overdue global move towards recognising discrimination against people with disabilities as a serious problem that must be addressed in every country.

Here is a guide to the draft United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities:

• Participating countries to change laws and ban discriminatory customs and practices
• Disabled people to have an equal right to life
• Equal rights for disabled women and girls
• Protection for children with disabilities
• A right to own and inherit property, to control financial affairs and have equal access to financial services
• Disabled people not to be deprived of their liberty ‘unlawfully or arbitrarily’
• Medical or scientific experiments without consent to be banned
• An end to enforced institutionalisation
• Freedom from exploitation, violence and abuse
• A right to privacy and access to medical records
• Countries to remove barriers to accessing the environment, transport, public facilities and communication
• A right to independent living
• Essential equipment to be made affordable
• A right to an adequate standard of living and social protection
• An end to discrimination relating to marriage, family and personal relationships
• Equal access to education
• An end to discrimination in the job market
• A right to equal participation in public life
• A right to participate in cultural life
• Developing countries to be assisted to put the convention into practice

For further information about the UN convention of the rights of people with disabilities see http://www.un.org/disabilities/convention/conventionfull.shtml.