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Summary: This speech was read by Save the Children on behalf of UN Special Rapporteur on Disability, Hissa Al Thani, at the Middle East and North Africa consultation on children and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, on 29 October 2007 in Sana’a, Yemen.
"I am very happy to have been able to participate with you in this very important consultation, if only through a paper. Though I am saddened not to have been able to be here with you and be part of the discussion that will take place at this meeting; and to return to Yemen—a country I have twice visited and would welcome another opportunity to visit. Additionally, I would have liked to be present at a Save the Children event—and organization whose work I have always followed and admired. I have sought, since the beginning of my mandate as Special Rapporteur to the Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities, to urge development organizations and United Nations agencies to incorporate the issues and rights of persons with disabilities on their agendas and into their programmes. I am very pleased to see that Save the Children is incorporating the United Nations International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) into its work with children—a Convention that commits and legally binds governments to respect, promote, protect and preserve the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities. It is particularly important that we begin working with children on these issues, not only because we, adults, have the responsibility to protect children and safeguard their rights, but also as a way of helping children understand and absorb the universal concepts and values as they appear in the UNCRPD and to empower them to advocate for their own rights and the rights of others. This echoes some of the programmes I have adopted through my office, and whose aim is to guide schools and educational institutions to adopt a child-to-child educational approach to create a culture of rights and respect and achieve the desired social transformation. Because the best place to start this transformation is, in my opinion, with children. Social awareness takes on added importance at all levels, particularly in relation to disability issues when viewed from the human rights perspective, rather than the traditional pitying or charitable outlook that has prevailed for a long time. This is especially true when we consider the concomitant change in ideas, ideology, belief, attitudes and practice that such a change embodies with the regard to the nature, needs, potentials and contributions of persons with disabilities. This becomes particularly important when we consider the importance of this change to human dignity, recognition of human rights, and the mechanisms needed to protect rights and address the violation of those rights. If we acknowledging that such awareness needs to be inclusive of all segments of society, then children should be first in line in any attempt to raise awareness. And why not go a step beyond including them to putting them at the forefront of the awareness raising process; making them the agents of change; the transmitters of change to other children and other segments of society and eventually to society at large. And once we recognize that children can fulfill this role, we need to work to involve them in the development processes that concern them. Involving them as partners in and contributors to the dialogues, consultations, and planning, the drafting and implementation of programmes, and even the monitoring and evaluation of those programmes that are aimed at creating a transformation in thinking, emotions, attitudes, behaviours—change at the social and human level in our perception of human rights, including, but not limited to the rights of persons with disabilities. For if we do not include the children—who form a large segment of society; a segments ready and amenable to accepting and absorbing change, new learning, new concepts, new values and capable of integrating a new culture into their day-to-day reality and habitual behaviour to the advantage of, not only persons with disabilities but all marginalized groups—then much of the work that we do may be in vain. Based on this understanding, I am completely in support of any efforts aimed at involving children in the dissemination of a human rights culture generally and the rights of persons with disabilities specifically. Such an involvement can easily be achieved through incorporating human rights culture into the school curricula and making children full partners in understanding and training other children. It is important to target children and students at an early age making them true and contributing partners in their social and emotional growth, their budding awareness, and in the shaping and moulding of their values and attitudes. Rehabilitating attitudes is just as important to our world as rehabilitating the physical space and the environment for persons with disabilities. By creating a culture of tolerance and an acceptance of “the other”, by raising children’s awareness of the “naturalness” of difference, we are helping make the social environment a more equalized one for persons with disabilities. This Consultation shows us that it is possible to involve children in those issues which we adults usually consider their own purview—those issues of finding solutions to social problems aimed at establishing a just society devoid of discrimination. As this consultation is about children, and includes children, I would like to address some of my comments to the children. What I would like to tell children is that there is a culture that is universal and all-encompassing. It is the culture of human rights. The basis of this culture is the United Nations Universal Declarations of Human Rights—and it includes the social, economic, civil, political and cultural rights of all. And it carried within it the concepts of equality and non-discrimination, tolerance and acceptance. As human beings sharing our space on this planet with others who are similar and different from us, we need to make this culture of accepting and respecting an indivisible part of our personal code of behaviour on a daily basis and practice it in our daily lives. It is only by accepting and incorporating these abstract concepts and making them concrete by acting on them and translating them into practice, that we are able to look at and understand how documents like the UN Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Standard Rules on the Equalizations of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities can actually change the condition for persons with disabilities and transform societies by making them more just and equitable. As Special Rapporteur responsible for monitoring the implementation of the Standard Rules, I was involved in the negotiation process of the Convention. Throughout the four years of negotiations, my conviction has deepened that both the Standard Rules and the CRPD are complementary documents. One is a practical, procedural implementation guide with clear measures and a how-to methodology for equalization; while the other is a rights-based, legal, legislative instrument that delineates the rights of persons with disabilities and offers ways of redress their violations. To this date over 100 countries have signed the CRPD and more than half that number have ratified it. But the question remains, are signing and ratifying the Convention enough to make the rights of persons with disabilities a reality? This is where the importance of creating a new culture of rights comes in—laws and legislations are important, but are they enough to change the daily life of a persons with disabilities; to change the way that a little boy with polio is treated by other boys in his village; to make a teenage girl less reclusive because she lost her legs to a landmine? Are legislations enough to prevent a child with learning difficulties from being excluded by his peers in the playground every school day? These situations and many more like them that occur every day across the world, are why children need to learn the connection between the language that they use and the attitudes that language engenders. Such learning cannot be found in the Convention or in the Standard Rules. We need to let children see that the language they use directly contributes to pre-conceived notions and stereotypes about persons with disabilities. Using words such as “retarded” and “unbalanced” to make fun of our friends reinforces the idea that persons with disabilities are not like us and should, therefore, be shunned. And using words such as “deaf” and “blind” to insult playmates in the playground, greatly influence children’s own attitudes towards persons with disabilities; where being deaf becomes something to be ashamed of and being blind means one is a lesser human being. Another thing we need to realize is that this type of “name calling” happens because persons with disabilities are invisible in most societies, unseen and unheard, shut out and shut in; unknown entities to most non-disabled children and adults. Therefore, it becomes easier to use these words not as a description of a condition but as a way of belittling the another. The CRPD and the Standard Rules both state the importance of integrating children with disabilities into the regular school system. The former states it as right and the latter offers the how-to of integration. It is through this integration that we respond to the imperatives of the two international documents to which our governments have signed on. However, it is through educating children and raising their awareness about rights, about common humanity and acceptance, that we actually break the barriers between children in the classroom, in the playground, in the village square, in the little fishing community where the Convention and the Standard Rules have not yet been. It is these values that will help to break the barrier between disabled and non-disabled and help in making us see one another as human being all of us with equal rights. Therefore, the main recommendation that I would like to make to persons with disabilities and their representative organizations is to urge and lobby their governments and advocate within their political systems for the implementation of the articles of the Convention on the ground, using the methods, procedures and measures detailed by the Standard Rules to make a difference in the lives of persons with disabilities. My other recommendation is to the children—both disabled and non-disabled—to embrace the culture of human rights for all, incorporate its values in their outlook and perceptions of others and themselves, and change their behaviour accordingly. Schools, parents, and organizations such as Save the Children can play a huge role in this. I am not an educator myself, so I will leave the how-to those who are experts. But I am a mother, and I will tell you what I would want my daughter to learn: 1. a human rights culture based on the respect for all and the acceptance of difference. I hope that this is what we are all willing to teach our children and that the children themselves will in turn teach other children. I wish you the best of luck in your consultations and hope that you too, will learn from the children." Hissa Al Thani Further information
2. in a school atmosphere and through an educational curriculum that incorporates the values and concepts of universal human rights.
3. the principles of democracy and democratic action in dealing with others at home, in school, in society and in the world at large.
4. an understanding of social equality and justice, and the true meaning of equalization of opportunities for all.
5. the ability to use all of the above and the courage to apply them in becoming an agent of change for a better world.
United Nations Special Rapporteur on Disability