From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: FW: News Release - Disabled People
Are Not Really HumanDate: Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:20:12 +0530
Dear Suhas, thank you so much for the reply. Please give my regards to gaynor
who came to Sri Lanka for the resource mobilization seminar.
Subject: FW: News Release - Disabled People Are Not Really Human
PRESS RELEASE
8 May 2008
UN Convention Campaign Coalition (UNCCC) calls for
'Ratification without Reservation'
STOP PRESS – GOVERNMENT LATEST –
DISABLED PEOPLE ARE NOT REALLY HUMAN
The Blair Government wanted to see the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons
with Disabilities (CRPD) happen – now the Brown Government wants to reserve on
some of the most important rights.
For five years the UK Government worked hard at the UN in New York and took a
leading role within the European Delegation to ensure that the CRPD was written
and approved. On March 30 2007 Anne McGuire, the Minister for Disabled People
was among the first signatories. By the end of March 2008, twenty countries
had ratified the Convention and on May 3 it became a live and functioning
convention.
But not in the UK. Last December, McGuire made it plain that there would be
reservations tabled before the UK could ratify. On Tuesday May 6, she issued
a statement outlining those reservations. Outrageously, despite the DDA, the
Life Chances Report and promises of full equality for disabled people by 2025,
the Government has decided that disabled people are only fit to receive some
rights – not the general inalienable, indivisible and comprehensive rights that
are due to other people.
Despite the fact that the CRPD states clearly that implementation of rights
contained within it are incremental, they could easily set a target for
completion rather than reserve. But the UK Government is saying loud and clear
that there are certain violations against disabled people that they should be
allowed to perpetrate for ever:
It should be allowed to bang disabled people up in residential accommodation,
even though evidence has shown that they are often abused and have no real
choice and control over their lives.
It should continue to provide segregated education away from home and friends,
despite the mounting evidence that fully supported inclusive education in their
own communities is the only way that disabled children can attain some sort of
equality.
It is perpetuating the discrimination of the DDA and allowing the armed forces
to discriminate in the employment of disabled people – despite the disabled
veterans that are going back to the war zones complete with their prosthetics.
And they are reserving the right for disabled people to have liberty of
movement, nationality and immigration.
A meeting of the Commonwealth Disabled People's Forum at the Commonwealth
Foundation in London, on hearing of the UK's intentions to ratify only with
reservations, issued a public statement in which they expressed their shock and
said:
"We wish to express our deep concerns that any Commonwealth country should not
be whole hearted in their support of human rights for disabled people. We are
united in our hope that the UK will take the leadership in ratifying and
implementing the CRPD without reservations and that their leadership will be
followed throughout the Commonwealth."
Rachel Kachaje, a disabled leader said:
"Disabled people see that hope springs out of the Convention - hope for a new,
inclusive world where disabled people can be seen as fully human."
"Apparently the present UK Government does not share that view of the full
humanity of disabled people".
-------------------
Notes to Editor:
The UNCCC is a coalition of 22 disabled peoples organisations and disability
organisations campaigning to ensure that the UK Government ratifies the CRPD
without reservations.
For further information contact:
Richard Rieser – [EMAIL PROTECTED] 020 7359 2855
Rachel Hurst – [EMAIL PROTECTED] 01666 837 671
------------------------
Marcus ChurchillPress and PR OfficerScope6 Market RoadLondon N7 9PWTel: 0207
619 7201Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Never has your name been worth so much! Please urge the UK Government to ratify
the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in full by adding
your name to the online petition at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/noreservations/
Make your name count today!
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