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‘Don’t see our disability, see our ability’ ‘The new Convention is a powerful tool for change. The challenge for us in Bangladesh is to use it to make a difference in the lives of children with disabilities.’ Dr. Nafeesur Rahman, Director, NFOWD A signifcant meeting about the rights of children with disabilites has concluded in Dhaka. Save the Children in collaboration with ActionAid Bangladesh and the National Forum of Organizations Working with the Disabled (NFOWD) finalised a Regional Consultation on Children’s Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CPRD). The three day meeting brought together representatives from 6 countries in South Asia, including government officials and disability rights and NGO representatives, from Nepal, India, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, as well as Bangladesh. The meeting ended with an address by Mr. M.A. Hye Howlader, Secretary, Ministry of Social Welfare who congratulated the participants on their hard work. He committed the Government of Bangladesh, which has signed the CRPD, to early ratification and to take every possible action to implement the Convention. During the lively consultative meeting, participants discussed how to use the new Convention to promote and strengthen the rights of children with disabilities. Participants also considered governments’ obligations to fulfil, protect and respect these rights. Successful strategies, from the respective countries, for promoting the rights of children with disabilities were also shared. These experiences will be used to illustrate a handbook that will be based on regional consultations, not only in South Asia, but also the Middle East and South East Europe, and will be published by Save the Children in December 2008. Notes The UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD) is the first human rights treaty of the 21st Century which marks a paradigm shift in attitudes and approaches to persons with disabilities. It reaffirms that human rights extend to all people, irrespective of disability or age. The significance of the treaty, therefore, is not in establishing new human rights standards for people with disabilities; rather, it is to ensure their realisation. The treaty introduces new obligations to overcome cultural, legal, economic and physical barriers and introduces measures which ensure that people with disabilities are acknowledged as subjects of rights, entitled to respect on an equal footing with all other people. The UNCRPD was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2006 and opened for signature on 30 March 2007. At present 95 countries have signed, including Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka, with one ratification, Jamaica. This is the highest number of signatories in history to a UN Convention on such short time span. Children with disabilities experience widespread violations of their rights, many of which are common to those faced by adults – poverty, social exclusion, lack of accessible environments, violence. However, they also face additional abuses – abandonment as babies, institutionalisation, exclusion from education, lack of birth registration, lack of respect for their evolving capacities, inappropriate child protection systems and so forth. And despite obligations to address the rights of children with disabilities under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, too little progress has been made to date.
(Workshop Participants)