Programme : Presentation on Day 2

Ongoing work on disability to support the process towards the Convention

Mona Paré - UN DESA/DSPD

Abstract
(Full Transcript follows)

The presentation first gives an overview of our mandates to clarify the role of the Programme on Disability within the Division for Social Policy and Development in the process of elaboration of a convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. It then goes on to define conceptual frameworks of our work, focusing on emerging issues in the areas of disability, development and human rights. The presentation then explains more in detail what we do, what are our priorities in this convention process within our conceptual framework, and what are our specific on-going and future projects.

One of the main issues examined in the presentation includes the growing awareness of the need to link development and human rights in practice, as well as to mainstream disability within development and human rights. The presentation looks at the role of the UN Programme on Disability in facilitating the establishment of links between development and human rights.

The key elements of our work in those areas are:

The provision of support in emerging/key areas through research, analytical papers, call on to experts, organization of meetings;
The facilitation of dialogue by making information accessible, organising meetings, virtual discussion forums and groups;
The facilitation of the use of broader human rights framework: providing information on disability norms and standards and their implementation at different levels, conducting training workshops and seminars

The main projects described in this presentation include our on-going project on the Resource on International Norms and Standards relating to Disability, and the Compendium of International and Regional Instruments relating to Disability, which are published on our website, as well as Virtual Discussion forums. The main project that is being developed is the Disability Norms and Standards Project, which includes the creation of a database on international, regional and national norms and standards relating to disability, as well as training programmes in capacity building in this area.

Full Transcript

UN ESCAP/CDPF Regional Seminar on an International Convention on Disability
Beijing, China, 4-7 November 2003

Ongoing work of the United Nations Programme on Disability to support the process towards the convention

1. Background of our work to support the convention process: mandates of the United Nations Programme on Disability:

The Programme on Disability is part of the Division for Social Policy and Development, within the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat. The work of the Programme is primarily guided by the mandates we receive from the intergovernmental bodies of the United Nations: the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, and the Commission for Social Development.

The main function of the Programme on Disability, as part of the United Nations Secretariat, is to service these bodies, and therefore to support and facilitate the intergovernmental process.

Our work to support the process of the elaboration of a new convention on the rights of persons with disabilities is based on the General Assembly resolutions concerning the establishment and the process of the Ad Hoc Committee (AHC) on a Comprehensive and Integral International Convention on Protection and Promotion of the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities, such as the decision to establish a Working Group that will draft a text, which will be the basis for negotiation of a convention by Member States in the AHC.

In addition, our work related to the convention is also linked to the disability-specific instruments, such as the World Programme of Action concerning Disabled Persons and the Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities, and include also documents with a broader development perspective, such as the outcome documents of the world summits and conferences, especially the World Summit on Social Development, and the Millenium Declaration, which is implemented throughout the United Nations.

2. The conceptual Framework of the work of the Programme on Disability

The work of the Programme on Disability is concerned with emerging issues related to disability, development and human rights, which are drawn from our mandates, and for which there is growing recognition in the United Nations. These issues include the recognition of a link between development and human rights, and concern for the human rights of persons with disabilities.

There is growing recognition that disability is not included in development and human rights to a sufficient extent. For example, existing international instruments applicable to persons with disabilities are not used to their fullest extent to protect the rights of persons with disabilities. (These international instruments include: general human rights instruments, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; instruments that apply to specific groups, such as CEDAW and the CRC; instruments that are specific to persons with disabilities, such as the World Programme of Action, the Standard Rules, and some ILO instruments; as well as international policy instruments, such as the outcome documents of world conferences and summits.)

The lack of a disability perspective in human rights and development results in a disproportionate number of persons with disabilities who live in poverty and who are discriminated against in many areas of life.

There is also a growing recognition that the strong link between development and human rights is not sufficiently reflected in human rights and development work at the international and national levels. Development initiatives are needed for the implementation of human rights standards, especially economic, social and cultural rights, and development goals provide concrete targets for the implementation of human rights standards, which sometimes seem vague or theoretical. On the other hand, human rights provide a normative framework for development work.

The interdependence of human rights and development has been recognised at the United Nations. For example, this is established by all United Nations world summits and conferences, which call for placing people at the centre of development, focusing on social integration and empowering people. General Assembly resolution 56/168 on the establishment of the AHC, also includes human rights and development as a basis for work of the AHC.

3. Our work: general tasks and specific projects

What do these mandates and conceptual framework mean for our work concretely?

At the basic level, facilitating the convention process means, for example, making documents available to the AHC and to the Working Group, as requested in the resolutions, providing background documents, conducting studies, researching key areas, providing technical input through expert group meetings. It also means making the meetings happen, for example by ensuring that the needs of persons with disabilities relating to accessibility are taken into account.

At a broader level, we undertake activities with specific goals within our conceptual framework.

One such goal relates to bridging the gap between disability, development and human rights. The activities of the Programme on Disability include conducting research on the concrete ways to relate development and human rights at the national/local level, organising expert group meetings on these issues, and hosting virtual discussion forums, which allow experts from different regions and disciplines to share ideas together.

One of the goals of the Programme on Disability is therefore to facilitate the mainstreaming of disability within human rights and development, and mainstreaming human rights within development, in order to ultimately arrive at a merging of disability, development and human rights communities.

(The development community would benefit from the inclusion of a rights based approach to development by the institutional and legislative changes that a human rights approach requires. Moreover, it would help to empower people as part of their struggle for sustainable human development goals. It would also make States accountable to work towards development goals if these are considered as part of their obligations.

The human rights community would benefit from the inclusion of development concerns within the human rights work, as it would help to operationalize human rights norms and standards and provide concrete goals for their implementation. It would also guarantee sustained attention to economic, social and cultural rights, and clarify the links between these rights and civil and political rights.

The disability community would benefit from the mainstreaming of disability within the wide spheres of human rights and development, and also from coordinated work between human rights and development communities. This would ensure that their interests are addressed at all levels and included in norms, policies and programmes.)

Effective use of the broad international normative framework is essential in the process of mainstreaming disability within human rights and development. Even though the necessity for a new convention has been established, it is important for disability communities, human rights communities and development communities to learn to use the existing frameworks, because it is a step towards facilitating the convention process, and prepares these communities and Member States for the convention and its implementation in the future.

This “twin-track” approach, that allows simultaneous elaboration of a new convention and use of existing instruments and mechanisms, enables people, communities and countries to become aware of the issues concerning the rights of persons with disabilities and to start preparing legislation and policies which would facilitate the implementation of the convention in the future, to identify areas where there are gaps in the protection of the rights of persons with disabilities both nationally and internationally, and therefore to identify areas that need to be strengthened with the new convention.

One of the roles of the Programme on Disability in this area is to make sure that relevant information is available and accessible to all. This means that we publish documents concerning the convention process, as well as other relevant documents on our website in an accessible format: this includes information about existing international instruments that are applicable to persons with disabilities, analytical information on international and regional norms and standards concerning persons with disabilities, and on the link between international instruments and their implementation a the national level.

The main resource of the Programme is a project called Resource on International Norms and Standards relating to Disability, which is published on our website. The Resource covers the following areas:

National Frameworks for the Protection and Promotion of the Rights Persons with Disabilities, which shows the link between the international and national normative frameworks;
the International Human Rights System, which goes through the main human rights instruments and processes;
the Regional Human Rights System, which gives an overview of instruments and processes in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe;
a Rights-based Perspective on Disability, which shows the importance of specific international norms and standards to persons with disabilities and how they should be applied to these persons; and
Rights of Special Groups with Disabilities, which shows how multiple discrimination against persons with disabilities can be addressed with the special protection accorded to certain groups, such as migrants, women, children.

The Resource is an on-going project, which started a few years ago, and needs to evolve, as the area keeps developing. As an on-going project, it is not a static document that will one day be “finished” and officially published. We keep updating it, for example when new international instruments are adopted. We also call for comments on it from experts and communities, and wish to establish an on-going dialogue about it.

We also have a Compendium of International and Regional Instruments relating to Disability on our website. It acts as a bibliography for the Resource document, but serves also as a separate resource, with a comprehensive list of international and regional instruments relating or applicable to persons with disabilities and the references to these documents.

In addition to sharing information by posting documents on our website, we also facilitate dialogue between all constituencies by organising expert group meetings on issues concerning the protection and promotion of rights of persons with disabilities through the broad normative framework. For example, we organised the United Nations Consultative Expert Group Meeting on International Norms and Standards Relating to Disability at the University of California at Berkeley in 1998, the International Seminar and Symposium on International Norms and Standards relating to Disability in Hong Kong, in 1999, the Informal Consultative Meeting on International Norms and Standards for Persons with Disabilities, held in New York in 2001, and Panel Discussion on the elaboration of a convention on the rights of PWD during the 2^nd session of the AHC in June 2003.

4. Projects in the pipeline

With the convention process moving forward, we want to improve and strengthen the work of the Programme on Disability in the previously mentioned areas, and we have a few projects that we are planning to implement in order to facilitate the convention process.

First of all, we are launching a Virtual Forum which will enable members of the Working Group to start discussing the text of the convention before their meeting in January. This will be combined with a Public Forum, which will allow all interested parties to follow the discussion, and to post messages on the Forum. This is a tool for the Working Group: the members can decide to communicate only among themselves, or they can also decide to consult or participate in the public discussion.

We are also planning to have virtual discussion Forums on various issues covered in our Resource on International Norms and Standards relating to Disability. This would help the project evolve in a continuous manner, and also become a useful resource during the elaboration of the convention.

One of our major projects is the Disability Norms and Standards Project. The Project would complement the Resource by providing links to the full texts of international and regional instruments pertaining to persons with disabilities as well as to national legislation, policies, case law and other relevant documents. The purpose is to show how international norms and standards can be implemented at the national level, and thus provide a compilation of “best practices” and their analysis in one database. The Project is part of the awareness raising process and development of the rights of persons with disabilities. It would be useful in the preparation process for the convention, as it would allow a review and assessment of legislative and policy frameworks at the national level that would show which areas need more study, or what rights need more emphasis within this international process.

The Project will also reinforce a multisectoral approach to rights of persons with disabilities, as norms and policies relating to disability can be found in different areas, such as employment, education, health, social services and transportation.

Concretely, the Disability Norms and Standards Project is to assist individuals, organizations and governments in using existing norms and standards to promote and protect the rights of persons with disabilities. Information provided through the database will be helpful for:

Persons with disabilities and other concerned individuals who wish to learn about the rights of persons with disabilities in the context of the existing normative frameworks;
Governments looking for guidance in policy and legislation development that respects and protects the rights of persons with disabilities in compliance with international norms and standards;
Persons and organizations involved in monitoring the implementation of international human rights conventions and interested in including a disability perspective to the monitoring of human rights;
Legal practitioners seeking to use international norms and standards effectively at the national and regional level;
Scholars and researchers able to better contribute to the promotion and protection of the rights of persons with disabilities with knowledge of existing standards, examples of best practice, as well as areas less well covered by legislation;
Community groups interested in training, lobbying and advocating for the rights of persons with disabilities through knowledge of existing norms and standards and their implementation in practice.

We are in the process of looking for partners at the regional and national levels who could help us implement this project, by compiling relevant national documents, and showing the link between the international, regional and national levels through an analysis of selected national practices in light of international legal and policy instruments in the fields of human rights and development.

We also envisage technical cooperation activities with this Project in the form of training programmes in capacity building in disability law and policy at national and regional levels. This training component, through seminars and workshops, would improve the capacity of interested States, people and organizations to use international norms and standards effectively in practice, focussing on local needs and circumstances, and on long-term results in the protection of the rights of persons with disabilities at the national level. This component would also encourage the formation of a new community, where disability, development and human rights experts and activists work together towards the same goals.

For this project, we would like to identify areas of interest by starting a dialogue with representatives of both governmental and non-governmental communities.

5. Our work in a nutshell

To sum up: the key elements of the work of the Programme on Disability to support the process towards a convention:

Providing support in emerging/key areas (such as link between HR, development and disability): research, analytical papers, call on to experts, organizing meetings;
Facilitating dialogue by making information accessible, organising meetings, virtual discussion forums and groups;
Facilitating use of broader human rights framework: providing info on disability norms and standards and their implementation at different levels, conducting training workshops and seminars

Plans in the future (during the convention elaboration process):

Develop series of expert group meetings on key issues that will be useful for the convention,
Establish an on-going dialogue about our project on the Resource on International Norms and Standards relating to Disability;
Implement the UN Disability Norms and Standards Project;
Start the training component of the Disability Norms and Standards Project (and other technical cooperation activities).

Conclusion:

The elaboration process is an important part of the preparation towards the future implementation, and the Division for Social Policy and Development is committed to facilitating this process and providing support where it is needed, for example through technical cooperation. This is important because the convention will ultimately be implemented by Member States with the active involvement of disability communities, so the needs and experiences existing at the national level should be reflected in this process.

It is thus important that the Division/Programme is informed about the views of as many stakeholders as possible, so that it can provide improved support to the process. We would be very grateful if you could give us your views and comments about our projects. One area of possible collaboration would be through our Disability Norms and Standards Project, which includes the database and training components.

Contact details:

Mona Paré
Email: parem@un.org
Tel: 917 367 4339
Fax: 212 963 0111
Website: http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/enable/

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Main	Programme	Materials	Online	Beijing

	UN ESCAP/CDPF Regional Meeting on an International Convention on Disability Beijing, China, 4-7 November 2003