UN Disability Convention - Topics at a Glance:
History of the Process
Introduction
Over the past two years, the National Council on Disability
(NCD) has released several documents and reports related to the
development of a UN convention (i.e., international human rights
treaty) on the rights of people with disabilities. This briefing
paper condenses the history of the process and provides new information
regarding recent developments.
History of the Process
In November 2001, the UN General Assembly established
an Ad Hoc Committee (AHC) to “consider proposals for a comprehensive
and integral convention on the rights and dignity of persons with
disabilities.” This action came after many years of advocacy
by the disability community for the inclusion of disability in the
UN human rights legal framework.
The AHC, which reports to the General Assembly, met
for the first time in July 2002. Very little significant progress
was made by the AHC at this meeting: it was simply decided that
regional consultations should be held, and that the Committee should
meet again the following year. On the positive side, members of
the disability community from many different countries and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) attended the AHC meeting. To maximize their
impact, they organized themselves into a “Disability Caucus”
for the purpose of developing strategies and speaking with a united
voice to the AHC. Meetings were held daily to coordinate messaging
and to select who would speak on behalf of the Caucus each day.
As a result of this coordination, the Disability Caucus
was successful in persuading the AHC to allow for a very open process
in which the expertise and perspectives of people with disabilities
and their representative organizations would play a significant
role. Accredited NGOs were granted the right to attend any public
meeting of the AHC, to make statements on the floor of the Committee,
to receive all official meeting documentation and to make written
presentations. This is very much to the credit of the disability
community, as the UN is traditionally very resistant to significant
inclusion of outside groups. It often takes years for a community
to get a foothold in a treaty process.
Between the first and second meetings of the AHC,
regional “Expert Meetings” were held in several regions
to discuss substantive issues related to the development of a convention.
When the AHC re-convened in June 2003, the first three days yielded
consensus that a convention was indeed needed and that work on drafting
a convention should be started.
For the remainder of the two weeks the Committee was
singularly focused - in formal and informal sessions - on establishing
a special working group to draft a treaty text for consideration
by the Committee in 2004. The Disability Caucus fought very hard
for inclusion of people with disabilities on this working group,
repeating “nothing about us without us!” in every public
statement it made to the AHC. The impressive result was that representatives
of the disability community were granted nearly one-third of the
seats on the working group, which is unprecedented for an official
UN drafting committee.
The final decision from the second AHC meeting was
that the working group would comprise 27 governmental representatives,
12 NGO representatives and one representative from among National
Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs).
The AHC charged the Disability Caucus with deciding
how the twelve NGO seats on the working group should be allocated.
The Caucus decided that one seat each would be given to the seven
International Disability Alliance (IDA) member organizations. The
remaining five were divided up regionally among Europe, the Americas,
Africa, West Asia (mainly Arab states) and Asia Pacific. The twelve
NGO representatives on the working group are:
Regional seats:
Luis Fernardo Astorga, the Americas
Shuib Chalklan, Africa
Theresia Degener, Europe
Adnan al Aboudi, West Asia
Anuradha Mohit, Asia Pacific
International Disability Alliance
member seats:
Venus Ilagan, Disabled Peoples’ International
Robert Martin assisted by Klaus Lachwitz, Inclusion International
Gerard Quinn, Rehabilitation International
Kicki Nordstrom, World Blind Union
Liisa Kauppinen, World Federation of the Deaf
Lex Grandia, World Federation of DeafBlind
Tina Minkowitz, World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry
There is no official list of governmental representatives
to date.
The working group will convene officially in January
2004 for a two week working session. It is not clear how the work
will be structured. Normally, drafting processes include only governments
that are able to work through the mission structure of the UN. In
this case, however, the large number of NGOs on the working group
precludes that option. Instead, DESA (the Department of Economic
and Social Affairs at the UN), which is the coordinating department
for the AHC, plans to create an online forum to facilitate the process.
It is not clear whether this website forum will be open to the public,
although many expect that it will be. The forum will not be launched
until the governmental representatives have been identified.
There are many working papers on the table - some
in the form of draft conventions and others that offer commentary,
general principles, ideas for structure and content, etc. The working
group has been instructed to consider these documents as it undertakes
its work. These documents are available on the DESA website: http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/enable/rights/adhoccom.htm
The twelve NGO members of the working group have been
in coordinated communication with one another since the adjournment
of the AHC meeting. It is an enormous responsibility to represent
the global disability community in the development of international
human rights law pertaining to people with disabilities. The twelve
will meet in Madrid from December 13-15 to discuss strategies for
ensuring that the views of people with disabilities are the focus
of the drafting process. The European Disability Forum is convening
this meeting.
The United States Position on a Convention
During the second AHC meeting, Ralph Boyd, former
US Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, announced that the
US would “participate in order to share our experiences -
and to offer technical assistance if desired on key principles and
elements - but given our comprehensive domestic laws protecting
those with disabilities, not with the expectation that we will become
party to any resulting legal instrument.” He also indicated
that an international convention will not necessarily be helpful
to other countries either, asserting that ensuring the rights of
people with disabilities is a “largely domestic mission”
and stating that “the most constructive way to proceed is
for each Member State, through action and leadership at home, to
pursue within its borders the mission of ensuring that real change
and real improvement is brought to their citizens with disabilities.”
In a press conference at the UN, NCD Chair, Lex Frieden, commented
“Many countries still require the guidance of international
compacts to ensure the human rights of people with disabilities.
NCD further believes that, as the world evolves into a global society,
it is important to have meaningful international standards and structures
in place to protect people with disabilities from discrimination
and abuse.”
For more information on the role of a convention and
its relevance to Americans with disabilities, please visit NCD’s
website for documents on this topic:
An
International Disability and Human Rights Convention
Understanding the Role
of an on the Human Rights of People with Disabilities International
Convention
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