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RIGHTS: Ending Poverty Means Empowering the Disabled

Isaac Baker

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 3 2005 (IPS) - U.N. member states and disabled advocacy groups finalised a draft agreement Thursday to defend basic rights like independent living, employment and equality, paving the way for the first-ever international treaty guaranteeing the rights of the disabled.

The draft text will now be up for review by the General Assembly, and would be formalised at a future U.N. convention, for which no official date has been set.

In what is considered a major breakthrough, it addresses political and socioeconomic development as well as simply greater access to the physical environment.

"What we do agree upon on in this committee will have direct consequences for those who have to face their life and personal development with disability," said the chairman of the drafting committee, Luis Gallegos Chiriboga.

"We must attend to the needs of a segment of the world population which, in spite of disability, gives us a lesson for living and for overcoming adversities."

The U.N. estimates that 600 million people worldwide – about one-tenth of the world’s population – currently live with some form of disability, ranging from blindness and deafness, to immobility and various mental disabilities.


While disabled persons represent around 10 percent of the global populace, their rights have been largely disregarded in the international arena, disability advocacy organisations and other NGOs say.

"Disability is a natural part of human diversity, and the problems that people with disabilities face in fully enjoying their human rights stem from the failure of society to be inclusive of people with disabilities," Venus Ilagan, the chairperson of Disabled Peoples’ International, told IPS Thursday.

"Societal barriers – physical, informational, legal, attitudinal and others – are the things that need to be ‘treated,’ not people with disabilities."

"It is our hope that the new Convention will provide guidance to U.N. member states in how to address these societal barriers, so that people with disabilities can fully enjoy their human rights," Ilagan said.

All 191 U.N. member states were listed as participants at the committee’s negotiations, and over 100 have expressed early support of a treaty.

However, others have already voiced opposition to a binding document. U.S. President George W. Bush, for example, argues that states should act individually to promote disabled rights.

To ensure that disabled persons were heard at the negotiations, the U.N. committee invited hundreds of speakers and representatives from disability advocacy groups over the course of the two-week session.

One of the major issues discussed was the prevalence of poverty among the disabled.

The World Bank reports that one in five of the of the world’s 450 million poor are disabled, meaning that disabled persons are twice as likely to be living in poverty. The disabled poor also tend to be at the bottom end of the poverty level, making basic necessities nearly unattainable.

Sue Stubbs, the coordinator of the International Disability and Development Consortium (IDDC), said addressing the convention’s focus on the issue of poverty among the disabled was vital.

"This convention can help ensure that disabled children, women and men are included in all the international efforts to reduce poverty and provide a basic standard of living for all human beings," Stubbs said.

However, the U.N. has been criticised by disabled rights groups for not including disabled persons enough in directives aimed at reducing poverty.

Groups like Handicap International and the IDDC say the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a series of objectives that include halving poverty, do not adequately consider disabled persons. And since the disabled represent around one in five of those in poverty, this could undermine the U.N.’s ability to achieve the goals, they say.

"Six out of eight MDGs have fundamental links to disability and cannot be achieved without taking disability issues into account," IDDC’s report to the U.N. committee said.

Alexander Wood, executive director of the New York-based Disability Network, said many disabled people are unable to find decent jobs.

"It’s a whole interlocking thing where in order to have access to the workplace you need transportation, you need an education system that.works on building the skills that people with disabilities so that they can read and write and compete on a level playing field with other applicants on the job market," Wood said.

Wood said 70 percent of working-age disabled persons are unemployed in the United States – one of the world’s richest countries – due to a lack of services relating to education, job training, housing and other factors.

The U.N. committee has included many issues concerning the right to work in the draft treaty.

At the U.N. conferences, disability rights groups also spoke of the need for inclusion into their societies, which they say are largely inaccessible to disabled persons.

Disabled advocates expressed concern that factors like prejudice and discrimination, insufficient health care services and housing, transportation and mobility restraints, and other barriers lead to inequality and disenfranchisement of the disabled.

Matthew Sapolin, the executive director of the New York City Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, also said disabilities are not the problem, societal restraints on the disabled are.

"The problem is not my disability," Sapolin, who is blind, said Tuesday at a U.N. panel discussion on disabled rights. "The problem is the environment in which we live, and how can we tackle and break down those obstacles."

 
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