General News
Ratification ainโt enough
Kamal Lamichhane
When we look back in history, persons with disabilities were traditionally treated as passive recipients of support based on feelings of pity and sympathy. The relegation of disability issues to charitable organisations ensured the continued exclusion of persons with disabilities from mainstream society. However, in the 1960s and 1970s, an era associated internationally with civil rights, a wide variety of strategies, programmes and policies embracing the inclusion of persons with disabilities appeared worldwide. As a result, disability issues started getting some space in development programmes. The entire world community celebrated 1981 as International Year of Persons with Disabilities. Furthermore, there were several attempts in the middle of 1980 to develop a disability-specific convention; however, those efforts did not succeed due to lack of consensus among countries. The tireless efforts of persons with disabilities bore fruit nearly two decades later when the UN unanimously adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) on Dec. 13, 2006.
On Dec. 27, 2009, three years after the UN passed the convention, Nepalโs parliament unanimously decided to ratify it and its optional protocols. This is a landmark step taken by Nepal. The UNCRPD, the first human rights treaty containing 50 articles ensuring civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights of persons with disabilities clearly recognises them as equal citizens and promotes their human rights such as the right to education, health, work, justice and so on. Apart from these major rights, the UNCRPD marks a paradigm shift in attitudes and approaches to persons with disabilities. Moreover, based on this treaty, impairment and disability need to be clearly understood while addressing disability issues.
As stated in the Preamble (e) of the UNCRPD, โDisability results from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinders their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.โ As impairment is a natural part of the human experience, it should be acknowledged that disability is a combination of impairment and disabling environment of society which can create activity limitations to individuals. In this sense, to meet the UNCRPD, disability issues should be tackled as an important social, economic and political agenda. Also, Nepal needs to seriously work against disability-based discrimination and social inequality besides protecting and promoting human rights. This will ultimately help create a rights-based and inclusive Nepal.
While adopting the UNCRPD in 2006, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said, โToday promises to be the dawn of a new eraโ an era in which disabled people will no longer have to endure the discriminatory practices and attitudes that have been permitted to prevail for all too long. This convention is a remarkable and forward-looking document.โ
Although results cannot be expected overnight, steps have to be taken to achieve what Kofi Annan said at the UN assembly. Therefore, the writer would like to remind all that it is not enough to ratify the treaty, we should start implementing it. And to implement it, explicit commitment at all levels, not simply from top to down, is required. More specifically, the government should enact laws and other measures to ensure the rights of persons with disabilities, and also abolish legislation, customs and practices that discriminate against them.
Similarly, the writer would also like to urge all national and international development agencies, NGOs and INGOs to realise the local needs of persons with disabilities. There is no doubt that we all have good intentions to improve the situation of Nepalis with disabilities by paying attention to local specifics and designing programmes to address their needs. Experts on disability issues and organisations for and of persons with disabilities should have a better understanding of priority issues in order to convince these agencies that we need action-oriented programmes, particularly in rural areas.
Although Nepal is on the path of making a new constitution, it is, however, unclear how specifically the CA plans to incorporate disability issues in the new constitution. Without systematically addressing disability issues, the livelihood of persons with disabilities cannot be improved and the sprit of the UNCRPD cannot be achieved. The new constitution-making process has attempted to include the issues of marginalised groups, for example, Dalits, ethnic groups and women; but even then the issues of persons with disabilities have not received proper attention from the political parties. They have forgotten that within the Dalit groups, there are persons with disabilities; within the indigenous groups, again there are persons with disabilities; and among women, there are women with disabilities, suffering dual discrimination. When we think of Dalits and other marginalised groups, we should also remember that Dalits with disabilities are the most discriminated against. Therefore, disability issues must be included as one of the major components of building a new constitution and a new Nepal.
It is needless to state that if the right person is put in the right job and provided reasonable accommodation, persons with disabilities can be economically independent and socially included. This argument is justified by the writerโs recent study which estimated that wage returns to the investment in education for persons with disabilities is nearly three times higher than that of those without disabilities. Despite these findings, however, persons with disabilities in Nepal often miss out on these benefits by not getting adequate access to education.
While no precise statistics are available on how many children with disabilities attend school in Nepal, the National Planning Commission and UNICEFโs 2001 study has stated that 68.2 percent of the people with all kinds of disabilities lacked any formal education. Likewise, the report further estimates that about 60 percent of the men and 78 percent of the women with disabilities had had no education. In this alarming situation, persons with disabilities should not be satisfied just with the formal ratification of the convention. So our first and foremost goals should be toward providing at least basic access to education, health care, employment and so on.
Finally, disability issues should not be put aside for the reason that many other urgent challenges face the country today. Persons with disabilities are one of the largest marginalised groups, and the countryโs development cannot be fully realised if disability issues are not comprehensively addressed. Only when inclusiveness is achieved can development efforts prosper; and inclusiveness cannot be achieved at the expense of any one group. Therefore, the writer would like to see 2010 as the year of implementing the UNCRPD.
Mail from: kamalnsdn@gmail.com
Source: http://www.ekantipur.com/the-kathmandu-post/2010/01/09/Oped/Ratification-aint-enough/3899/
