Disability Rights News Round Up

Recent weeks have seen a fair amount of activity related to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) – a number of the key milestones and events are outlined here.

The United Nations convened the 4th session of the Conference of States Parties (COSP) to the CRPD. Unlike other treaties, the COSP meets every year. There were over 600 participants in this year’s “Enabling Development, Realizing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities through Participation, Employment and International Cooperation” themed COSP session. Attendees represented governments, UN agency family members, the international disability community, and members of civil society.

During the three-day session, the COSP focused on a number of formal and informational interventions. Focused on inclusive development, the first roundtable session allowed for a discussion of how to realize the CRPD through international cooperation. During the discussion, Article 32 of the CRPD and the role of international cooperation were reaffirmed, and new modalities for providing aid to meet the needs of mainstream disability in development were addressed.

The second roundtable discussion focused on ensuring effective and full participation of individuals with disabilities in public and private life, as addressed in Article 29 of the CRPD. This session focused on identifying the progress made to date and barriers to political and public participation that still exist. Strategic recommendations were made to ensure the realization of disability-inclusive and accessible political progress. One of the primary concerns addressed was a lack of physical accessibility, which continues to be a major barrier to the full and effective inclusion of individuals with disabilities in public and political life. In order for the CRPD to be fully implemented, participants noted, individuals with all types of disabilities, including those with psycho-social or cognitive disabilities, must not be deprived of access to the political process.

In addition to the formal roundtable discussions, an informal session was held to discuss individuals’ with disabilities right to employment. Participants noted that individuals with disabilities are twice as likely to be unemployed than their peers without disabilities. The importance of comprehensive reforms, including development strategies to ensure accessible labor markets, the need for a firm policy framework against discrimination, and the importance of enforcing accessibility and education were all discussed.

The United Nations system also provided a presentation on their implementation of the CRPD, and outlined how UN programs had been used to ensure its implementation in countries and regions worldwide. The role of the UN organizations in fostering collaboration among governments, UN entities, and civil society to further the promotion of the CRPD was highlighted.

The 6th session of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, held between September 19 ad 23, followed the COSP. The opening session of the Committee meeting was led by Chairman Ronald McCallum, who provided and update on the number of countries who had submitted initial reports during 2011. Since the Committee meeting held in April, 16 reports had been received by the Secretariat, including Mexico, Korea, Belgium, and Ecuador.

The Chairman went on to address the Committee’s need to increase the number of reports. Mr. McCallum suggested an examination of collaboration across treaty bodies, particularly the Human Rights Council. Further, he stressed that the Committee had emerged as a group whose central purpose was to conduct constructive dialogues with States parties, and to work alongside national human rights agencies and civil society. To date, Spain’s report is the second of the 16 submitted to be considered, and a list of issues related to the reports of Peru and China have been adopted.

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World Report on Disability: Education

Among the range of topics addressed in the World Report on Disability is a chapter on the education of children and adults with disabilities. The report notes that education is a key contributor to human capital formations, and a determinant of personal wellbeing and welfare. Thus, the exclusion of children with disabilities from educational systems can potentially lead to fewer employment opportunities and increased susceptibility to poverty in adulthood. It is imperative that children with disabilities be allowed equal access to quality education to enable them to reach their full potential.

As noted in Article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, chapter 7 of the World Report on Disability stresses the rights of individuals with disabilities to education and documents the barriers these individuals often face – both at the policy and practical level. At the policy level, barriers include: education falling under different government responsibilities; lack of legislation, policy, target, and plans; and inadequate resources. At a practical level, children with disabilities can experience difficulty at schools where there is inflexible curriculum or inadequate support for training and support for teachers; physical or attitudinal barriers; or there may be issues related to bullying and abuse.

Children with disabilities may experience difficulty gaining access to education, as noted in the World Health Survey. Out of the 51 countries in the analysis, a reported 50.6 percent of males with disability have completed primary school, compared with 61.3 percent of males without disability. Additionally, reports indicate that females with disability report 41.7 percent primary school completion compared with 52.9 percent of females without disability. The Survey also found that enrollment rates differ according to disability type, and that children with physical disabilities generally fare better than those with intellectual or sensory disabilities. For example, in Burkina Faso in 2006 only 10 percent of 7- to 12-year olds with low-hearing or deafness were in school, whereas 40 percent of children with physical disabilities attended – only slightly lower than the attendance rate of children without disabilities.

The report also acknowledges the different approaches taken to provide education to individuals with disabilities. These include: the inclusion of special schools and institutions, integrated schools, and inclusive schools. The difference between inclusion in the broad and narrower sense is explored within the report, with broad inclusion meaning education of all children including those with disabilities, with common rules and procedures as dictated by the education ministry or equivalent. The narrower sense of inclusion is described as a system in which children with disabilities are educated in traditional classrooms with age-appropriate peers. The difference between these approaches can be seen in the variance that exists between countries. Across European nations, 2.3 percent of pupils within compulsory schooling are educated in a segregated setting – either a special school or a separate class within a mainstream school. Belgium and Germany in particular rely heavily on special schools in which children with disabilities are separated from their peers while Cyprus, Lithuania, Malta, Norway, and Portugal include the majority of students with disabilities in regular classes with their same-age peers.

According to the report, children with disabilities should have equal access to quality education and there is a need for a systemic and school-level change to remove physical and attitudinal barriers and provide reasonable accommodation and support services to ensure that children with disabilities have equal access to education. The Report provides a number of recommendations for the creation of inclusive education for children and adults with disabilities. These include:

• Formulate clear policies and improve data and information
• Develop a clear national policy on the inclusion of children with disabilities in education supported by the necessary legal framework
• Identify, through surveys, the level and nature of need to ensure that the correct support and accommodations can be introduced
• Establish monitoring and evaluation systems
• Share knowledge about how to achieve educational inclusion among policy- makers, educators, and families
• Adopt strategies to promote inclusion
• Focus on educating children in a fashion as close to the mainstream as possible. Do not build new special schools if no special schools exist
• Ensure an inclusive educational infrastructure
• Make teachers aware of their responsibilities towards all children and work to improve their skills for teaching children with disabilities
• Provide specialist services where necessary
• Increase investment in school infrastructure and personnel so that children with disabilities that are identified as having special educational needs obtain the required support during their education
• Make speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, and physiotherapy available to students with moderate or significant disabilities
• Support the participation and involvement of parents and family members
• Consider the introduction of teaching assistants to provide special support to children with disabilities

 

Click here to learn more about this chapter of the World Report on Disability

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Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Gives Concluding Comments on Tunisia

This weeks’ blog examines the process of submitting State reports and receiving feedback from the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Articles 34 and 35 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) establish the reporting mechanisms for States. Article 34 describes the Committee on the Rights of People with Disabilities and Article 35 asks that States, once they have ratified the Convention, make a report on their progress within two years. The process of submitting reports by States and receiving comments by the Committee is vital to understanding what the CRPD means in practice (i.e., when States implement it). The process highlights where good practice exists, identifies barriers to implementing the CRPD, and suggests changes/recommendations to bring about reform.

During its 5^th session in April 2011, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities met in Geneva. Among the items on their agenda was the consideration of the Tunisian government’s initial report on its implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The In its introductory remarks, the Committee welcomed the Tunisian government’s engagement with the CRPD. Tunisia was one of the first set of States to ratify the CRPD in 2008. The Committee particularly welcomed the fact that the initial report was inclusive of people with disabilities views and that some measures had been taken to harmonize their domestic law and policies with the Convention.

While welcoming the progress made by Tunisia in implementing the CRPD, the Committee also highlighted areas of concern, and made suggestions and recommendations. The following paragraphs highlight the Committee’s response on a selected number of articles:

• With regard to Article 6 on women with disabilities, the Committee noted the improvements made by Tunisia in this area but also concerns regarding the negative perceptions of women with disabilities both within their families and also the wider community. It recommended that Tunisia design awareness programs to promote positive images of women with disabilities and to ensure visibility of women with disabilities in the collection of data and statistics.

• Regarding Article 9 on Accessibility, the Committee recommended that the Tunisian government work in close consultation with people with disabilities and their representatives undertake a comprehensive review of the implementation of laws on accessibility to identify, monitor, and address the gaps that currently exist on access.

• With regard to Article 24, the Committee noted that Tunisia has a national program of inclusive education for children with disabilities. However, the Committee noted that in practice it is not implemented equally in schools. Among its recommendation on this article, the Committee suggested that the Tunisian government take steps to increase efforts to ensure the national program is enforced through all the schools; that sufficient resources are available to implement the program and finally that training for education personnel on disability is intensified.

• Finally, with regard to Article 27 on Work and Employment, the Committee noted the support that the Tunisian government has worked to provide to public sector employment of people with disabilities. However it was noted that low numbers of people with disabilities continue to be employed within the private sector. Its recommendations included ensuring that positive action is taken to promote employment of people with disabilities and that people with disabilities are included in employment monitoring mechanisms.

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