By IDA

 - June 6, 2017

Following the good practice initiated by the Committee on the Rights of the Child in its 75th session, last week the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) has provided Webcast of the interactive dialogue with the State delegation of Uruguay in the national language of the country - Spanish.

Back home, in Montevideo, the Office of the UN Resident Coordinator in Uruguay organised an event screening the "constructive dialogue" between the Uruguayan State delegation and the CESCR Committee, which was hosted by the Centro de Formación de la Cooperación Española. Many stakeholders participated, including a representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the President of the National Human Rights Institution.

Together with other civil society organisations, the Alliance of Organisations of Persons with Disabilities took advantage of this development. Issues on the rights of persons with disabilities were raised, including the lack of reasonable accommodation provisions in the legislation and non-compliance with employment quota for persons with disabilities in the public sector.

Together with other partner NGOs working on UN Treaty Bodies, IDA has been following up on this issue and addressed UN Treaty Bodies Secretariats to request that webcast in national language is provided.

IDA congratulates the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for this step forward in providing access to public sessions to right holders at the national level by providing Webcast in their national language. IDA also congratulates the UN Resident Coordinator in Uruguay and other stakeholders for their initiative.

IDA calls other UN Treaty Bodies to follow this practice and make the necessary arrangements to ensure Webcast is provided in the national language of the population whose rights are being discussed. IDA further calls the relevant stakeholders to seek to ensure full accessibility to UN Human Rights Process and beyond, including, among other things, sign language interpretation, captioning and easy to read formats.

IDA also calls UN Resident Coordinators and Country Teams, civil society, and especially DPOs around the globe to imitate the example of colleagues from Uruguay to actively engage and follow Treaty Bodies reviews, and make use for advocacy and training of the audiovisual material available online and, of course, of the Concluding Observations of the different UN Treaty Bodies."

Meeting of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights during the interactive dialogue with the State delegation of Uruguay