By IDA

 - December 5, 2011

Geneva, 3 December 2011 – IDA joins the celebration of this day and takes the opportunity to appeal to States, the UN human rights system and other stakeholders to continue increasing their attention to the rights of persons with disabilities, and to ensure that all actions in this regard are consistent with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the CRPD).

The growing commitment of States to advocate and promote the rights of persons with disabilities is reflected in the large number of signatures and ratifications that the CRPD and its Optional Protocol (OP) have obtained since its opening for signature on 30 March 2007, and in particular during this year, in which the CRPD reached the threshold of 100 ratifications. Currently, the CRPD and its OP have 106 and 63 ratifications respectively, and these numbers continue to increase rapidly because of the voluntary commitments and the acceptance by States of recommendations related to disability rights and the CRPD made by UN Treaty Bodies and the Universal Periodic Review (UPR).

So far, twenty States have presented their national reports to the CRPD Committee in accordance with their obligations to inform the Committee on how the CRPD is being implemented in their countries. This year, the CRPD Committee reviewed the national reports of Tunisia and Spain and it also adopted the List of Issues on Peru. The International Disability Alliance (IDA) actively participated in the monitoring process of these States, either through the presentation of suggestions and recommendations, in absence of any input from national DPOs, or by providing technical advice to the national DPOs which had presented parallel reports to the CRPD Committee.

Thanks to the international advocacy work of IDA and its members, as well as to the work of other civil society actors, the UN Treaty Bodies and the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) have greatly increased the attention to the rights of persons with disabilities in their work. However, there is still a long way to go to ensure that all persons with disabilities can enjoy fully their rights and are no longer excluded from policies and programmes, including those aimed at achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

In the outcome document of the Fourth High Level Forum held in Busan between November 19 and December 1st, donor and partner countries agreed on a Global Partnership for Development Effectiveness, as a follow up to the 2005 Paris declaration for aid effectiveness and the 2008 Accra Agenda for Action. Despite the reference to international commitments to human rights and disability, the lack of concrete commitments to a human rights based approach promoting non discrimination and inclusion, implies a high risk that development cooperation will continue to create and perpetuate barriers to the participation of persons with disabilities. In co-operation with the other civil society organisations that work on aid effectiveness, grouped together in the Better Aid coalition, IDA will continue to advocate for an international cooperation which puts the rights and needs of people at its center and will make use of all existing international human rights monitoring mechanisms to hold both donor and partner countries accountable to their commitments.

The new framework to be established for the period post-MDGs beyond 2015 will play a key role in addressing the discrimination and exclusion faced by persons with disabilities in international development efforts. “The High Level Meeting on Disability and Development to be held in 2013 should lead to an increased attention to the rights of persons with disabilities in the post-MDGs international development framework and we will need the support of all to achieve this,” stated Diane Richler, IDA´s Chair.

Contact: Stefan Trömel at stromel [at] ida-secretariat.org
Website: www.internationaldisabilityalliance.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/InternationalDisabilityAllianceIDA
Twitter: http://twitter.com/IDA_CRPD_Forum

 

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