When the Senate returns to this treaty in the new Congress, it should approach arguments against ratification with caution. The US is already committed to protecting human rights through its ratification of important human rights treaties. Opponents to CRPD missed that boat many years ago.
Over a billion people — 15 percent of the world’s population — live with a disability. These numbers should confer power and authority in decision making about all aspects of their lives, including to HIV and AIDS. Yet people with disabilities have been largely ignored in the global response to HIV.
Malta should be proud of its recent ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a crucial tool for protecting the rights of more than one billion people with disabilities worldwide. As the Government begins to integrate the convention into its laws and policies, it should understand that the protections apply to the thousands of migrants and asylum seekers who linger in immigration detention in Malta each year.
When we met Elijah early this year in Ghana, he was chained to a tree at a “prayer camp.” Five months earlier, his family had him bound with rope and forcibly taken to the camp for “treatment.” Elijah told me that he had been chained to the tree ever since – the “healing” prescribed for the restlessness and insomnia that his parents and the camp’s spiritual leaders had decided was a mental disability.
State efforts to restrict voting access have dominated election news this year. Since the beginning of 2011, legislators in 41 state governments have introduced at least 180 bills that wouldmake it harder to register or to vote. At least 25 laws and two executive actions have been enacted, affecting 19 states. These include laws requiring proof of citizenship or photo identification to register or to vote; limiting voting registration opportunities; and reducing early and absentee voting.
People with disabilities in Russia remain largely cut off from society and have very limited choices. So, Russia’s ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in May signaled a great moment for the country’s more than 13 million citizens with disabilities.
In many parts of the world, women rely on sterilization voluntarily as one of a range of methods for family planning. However, for other women, including women and girls with disabilities, sterilization is not a choice. Forced or coerced sterilization is often justified by claiming that it is in the "best interests" of women and girls with disabilities. But how are those interests defined, and who is defining them? Why isn't there greater attention in protecting women and girls with disabilities against sexual abuse and exploitation? Why are there so few services to support and empower women with disabilities in decisions about becoming parents?
In our research in Peru, we documented the legacy of a policy, changed only last October, that arbitrarily denied thousands of people with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities labeled “mentally disabled” their right to vote. This June, Congress passed a new disability rights law to update its national laws to conform to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – which Peru ratified in 2008, one of the first countries to do so. The new law makes clear that people with disabilities can act in their own interest, and when necessary, should be supported to exercise their rights. But for many Peruvians with intellectual or psychosocial disabilities, these rights are not yet realized.
Landon K., a 6-year-old boy with autism, was in first grade in a Mississippi elementary school when the 300-pound assistant principal picked up an inch-thick paddle and started hitting Landon on the buttocks. His grandmother, Jacquelyn K., told me: “My child just lost it ... he was screaming and hollering ... it just devastated him.”
State efforts to restrict voting access have dominated election news this year. Since the beginning of 2011, legislators in 41 state governments have introduced at least 180 bills that wouldmake it harder to register or to vote. At least 25 laws and two executive actions have been enacted, affecting 19 states. These include laws requiring proof of citizenship or photo identification to register or to vote; limiting voting registration opportunities; and reducing early and absentee voting.
In many parts of the world, women rely on sterilization voluntarily as one of a range of methods for family planning. However, for other women, including women and girls with disabilities, sterilization is not a choice. Forced or coerced sterilization is often justified by claiming that it is in the "best interests" of women and girls with disabilities. But how are those interests defined, and who is defining them? Why isn't there greater attention in protecting women and girls with disabilities against sexual abuse and exploitation? Why are there so few services to support and empower women with disabilities in decisions about becoming parents?