30/3/2007
Record Number Of Countries Sign UN Treaty On Disabilities On Opening Day

The European Community and eighty-one Member States signed a landmark new treaty this week that aims to improve the lives of 50 million EU citizens and an estimated 650 million people with disabilities worldwide. This is the first time the European Community signs a core UN human rights convention.

Jamaica also ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – the first country to go beyond endorsement and adopt it as law. The pact, the fastest negotiated international human rights instrument in history, needs 19 more States Parties to enter into force.

Some 44 countries signed the Optional Protocol to the Convention, which will give individuals recourse to an expert committee on the rights of persons with disabilities when all national options have been exhausted.

The Convention outlaws discrimination against persons with disabilities in all areas of life, including employment, education, health services, transportation and access to justice.

It requires that public spaces and buildings be accessible to persons with disabilities, and calls for improvements to information and communications infrastructure.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour told a press briefing in New York that the drive and commitment of the disability community was the greatest impetus behind the treaty’s content and relatively rapid adoption.

“It is very appropriate [that] it targets a community that has been marginalized for so long,” she said. “The most important thing is to recognize that where we are today is already a testimony to the empowerment of a community which has a long history of disempowerment.”

Yannis Vardakastanis of the International Disability Caucus called the Convention “a very drastic paradigm shift in the way the international community looks at disability.”

He said the pact should bring real changes in the daily lives of people living with disabilities, helping to take away the discrimination, exclusion and obstacles they routinely face.

“Allow me to quote the German poet Bertolt Brecht: ‘Some there are who live in darkness/while the others live in light/we see those who live in daylight/those in darkness out of sight.’ This is a Convention to bring those in darkness into light.”

"This Convention recognises at an international level that disability is a human rights issue," said Vladimír Špidla, EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities. "I welcome the unprecedented involvement of people with disabilities throughout the negotiation process and am proud that the EU and its members will be among the first to sign the Convention. It is a success for the EU as it reflects all the core elements of our disability strategy: anti-discrimination, equal opportunities and active inclusion. It also shows that Europe is at the forefront of strengthening rights for people with disabilities worldwide and is an important achievement in the European Year of Equal Opportunities for All."

The new treaty is the first comprehensive human rights convention to be adopted this century. It follows long-standing efforts by disability organisations and an increasing international recognition that existing UN human rights treaties failed to fully protect people with disabilities, who continue to suffer discrimination. This view is widely shared by Europeans, 53% of whom believe that discrimination based on disability is widespread, according to a recent Eurobarometer survey.

The European Commission's active role in the negotiations ensured that the Convention is in line with relevant EU legislation and jurisprudence - for example it takes on the definition of discrimination. In addition, the denial of 'reasonable accommodation' for people with disabilities – set out in EU law since 2000 – is now internationally recognised as a form of discrimination.

The text also acknowledges that women with disabilities are more likely to suffer from multiple forms of discrimination and accordingly calls for measures combining mainstreaming of gender issues and specific gender sensitive measures in the disability field.