Within the framework of its participation in the upcoming Conference of States Parties, the International Disability Alliance (IDA) and its CRPD Forum submits the following proposals for concrete outcomes to be achieved by the Conference which we would like to see reflected in the main outcome document of the COP.
IDA (CPD Forum) welcomes your committed support to these measures and to the cause of persons with disabilities around the world.
- Support to start the process towards the establishment of a UN fund to support the implementation of the CRPD
- Support by the COP for the inclusion in the relevant UN General Assembly resolution on the CRPD of the following proposals:
- The CRPD to be considered as the superseding UN disability-specific instrument. Older instruments which are partly inconsistent with the CRPD (World Programme of Action on Persons with Disabilities and also to the UN Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and for the Improvement for Mental Health Care (MI Principles) should be changed or no longer used as reference documents.
- The use of the Voluntary Fund to finance the participation by delegates from organizations of disabled persons from the Global South in the COP and in the CRPD Committee (to be included in the General Assembly resolution on the CRPD, but a COP signal is important)
- The need to increase the UN budget for the CRPD Committee to allow for more and/or longer meetings
- The request that DESA ensure that the Inter-Agency Support Group on the CRPD presents to the 65th session of the General Assembly guidelines on the rights of persons with disabilities for the UN country teams, which should be subject to consultation with IDA (CRPD Forum) as representative platform of the international disability movement.
- The establishment by this COP of one or more inter-sessional working groups which would produce technical implementation guidelines on one or more of the topics addressed by this COP. These inter-sessional working groups would be composed of experts from States and civil society, in particular organisations of persons with disabilities and a process would be set up allowing for contributions to be received by this group prior to its meeting and a process to allow feedback on their draft document before its presentation to the third COP.
- To decide that the next COP should last at least 6 meetings, either in the form of 3 full days or spread over 4-5 days, to allow sufficient time both for substantive discussion and for the (re)election of CRPD Committee members
- Support by the COP to the mainstreaming of the rights of persons with disabilities on the basis of the CRPD in all relevant resolutions of the upcoming General Assembly, in particular resolutions from the Second and Third Committee.
- In order to combat the extreme high levels of poverty and extreme poverty among persons with disabilities, the COP could make the following recommendations:
- That all UN specialized agencies, funds and programmes fully contribute to the implementation of the CRPD and to the promotion of the rights of persons with disabilities in all initiatives related to the Millennium Development Goals.
- That all bilateral and multilateral development cooperation agencies actively include in their programmes the rights of persons with disabilities, in accordance with article 32 of the CRPD.
- That all States include persons with disabilities as a priority group in their national plans to fight poverty, and that they include organisations of persons with disabilities in the design, implementation and monitoring of these plans.