COMMITTEE ON THE RIGHTS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES OPENS ITS SIXTEENTH SESSION

The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities this morning opened its sixteenth session, hearing an address by a representative of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Committee adopted its agenda and programme of work for the session, which includes the consideration of seven reports: Uruguay, Ethiopia, Bolivia, United Arab Emirates, Guatemala, Colombia and Italy. It also heard statements from other United Nations bodies, specialized agencies, non-governmental organizations and organizations representing persons with disabilities.

Opening the session, Orest Nowosad, Chief of the Groups in Focus Section, Human Rights Treaties Division of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, spoke about the progress achieved in advancing the rights of persons with disabilities, and welcomed the adoption of the Charter on the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian action during the World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016 in Istanbul. The ninth Conference of States parties to the Convention held in June 2016 in New York discussed the elimination of poverty and exclusion of persons with disabilities in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, and the promotion of the rights of persons with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities.

In her introductory statement, Committee Chairperson Maria Soledad Cisternas Reyes recalled the efforts and successes of the Committee during the eight years of its existence, and mentioned in particular the strong jurisprudence and guidance on some key issues, such as on Article 2, the right to protection from torture and ill treatment, access to information and technologies, right to inclusive education and on open, inclusive and accessible working environments. The Committee was considering the follow-up to concluding observations, and was preparing a report on the issue, and would continue to work on its General Comment on the right to inclusive education.

A representative of the Secretariat of the Committee said that since the Committee’s last session in April 2016, four new States had ratified the Convention bringing the number of States parties to 166: Brunei, the Netherlands, the Comoros, and Finland; Finland had also ratified the Optional Protocol. To date, 99 reports had been submitted by States parties and 40 had been reviewed, which left a considerable number of reports pending consideration by the Committee.

The Committee also heard statements from other United Nations bodies, specialized agencies, non-governmental organizations and organizations representing persons with disabilities. The discussion focused largely on the adoption of the Charter on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action at the World Humanitarian Summit held in May 2016 in Istanbul, the vulnerability of persons with disabilities in the event of natural disasters, and on the right to inclusive education and the right of persons with disabilities to choose.

Representatives of the following United Nations organizations and bodies made statements: United Nations Interagency Support Group to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations Children’s Fund, UN Women, United Nations Mine Action Service, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, World Intellectual Property Organization, and the Human Rights Council.

The following non-governmental organizations also took the floor: International Disability Alliance, World Federation of the Deaf, Inclusion International, European Network of Independent Living, and International Disability and Development Consortium.

The Committee will next meet in public at 3 p.m. this afternoon, to begin its review of the initial report of Uruguay (CRPD/C/URY/1).

A background release which includes the programme of work for the session and links to country reports and other documentation can be found here.

The Committee’s public meetings will be webcast live in English and Spanish; closed captioning and International Sign Language, are available through the link http://www.treatybodywebcast.org/.

Opening Statement

OREST NOWOSAD, Chief of the Groups in Focus Section, Human Rights Treaties Division of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that since the Committee’s last session, four States - Brunei, Finland, the Netherlands and the Comoros – had ratified the Convention, thus bringing the number of ratifications to 166. In his update on the annual meeting of Chairpersons of human rights treaty bodies from 30 May to 3 June 2016 in New York, Mr. Nowosad said that they had discussed simplified reporting procedures, implementation of the Addis Ababa Guidelines on the Independence and Neutrality of Members of Treaty Bodies, and the San José Guidelines against Intimidation or Reprisals. The Chairpersons had urged human rights treaty bodies to adopt common guidelines on the role of national human rights institutions, and to consider common criteria for reparations and investigations. In his recently published first biannual report on the human rights treaty bodies system, the United Nations Secretary-General had indicated that the implementation of resolution 68/268 was broadly positive; it promoted dynamism of treaty bodies, and the Secretary-General urged the treaty bodies to continue to harmonize their reporting processes.

Turning to progress in the area of the rights of persons with disabilities, Mr. Nowosad said that during the May 2016 World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, United Nations agencies, inter-governmental agencies, non-governmental organizations and organizations of persons with disabilities had approved the Charter on the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian action. In June 2016, the ninth Conference of States parties to the Convention had discussed the elimination of poverty and exclusion of persons with disabilities in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, and the promotion of the rights of persons with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities. The Human Rights Council had adopted a resolution on mental health and human rights aiming to eliminate all forms of discrimination in the mental health context, and had also addressed the issue of the rights of persons with disabilities in the resolutions on the role of the family and on the right to inclusive education.

Mr. Nowosad recognized that this Committee’s session would be very busy, with the consideration of seven initial reports and of individual communications and particular requests made under its investigation procedures. The Committee would continue to draft two General Comments, on women and girls with disabilities and on the right to inclusive education, as well as the guidelines on independent monitoring and the guidelines on reporting, including under simplifying reporting procedures. In closing, Mr. Nowosad expressed regret that States had failed to elect women members of the Committee during the June 2016 elections, and urged the Committee to continue to consider the important role of women in the context of the rights of persons with disabilities.

Statement by the Committee Chairperson

MARIA SOLEDAD CISTERNAS REYES, Committee Chairperson, in her opening statement, said that for the first eight years of its existence, the Committee had developed very strong jurisprudence and guidance on some key issues. Particularly important was the jurisprudence on Article 2, on the rights and freedoms of persons with disabilities, including the right to protection from torture and ill-treatment, and on the civil rights and liberties of persons with disabilities, including the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and access to information and technologies. The Committee had also spoken strongly on the economic, social and cultural rights of persons with disabilities, in particular on the right to inclusive education and on open, inclusive and accessible working environments. On the implementation of resolution 62/268, the Committee was making progress in processing reports in the time indicated by the resolution; the majority of the reports it was receiving were coming in under the simplified reporting procedure. The Committee had adopted two new General Comments, on the equal recognition of persons with disabilities before the law, which also included the issue of legal capacity, and the general comment on accessibility. The Committee was also making progress on reducing the time spent on developing a general comment, from the current three years to the target of 18 months.

Under its agenda item on methods of work, the Committee was considering the follow-up to concluding observations, and was preparing a report on the issue. By the end of this session, the Committee would have examined 47 State reports with the relevant recommendations. The increased number of ratifications of the Convention meant that the Committee would soon have to deal with the backlog, which would need to be addressed through an increased number of sessions, in accordance with resolution 68/268. The Chairperson recalled the pioneering efforts in devising ways and means of civil society organizations to participate in the work of the Committee and said that the draft guidelines for the participation of national human rights institutions were now ready. The Committee had been working closely with the bureau of the Conference of Parties to the Convention and its members had taken part in the panels and organized a number of side events, which focused on the cross-cutting nature of the Convention and the common ground with other international human rights instruments, on participation on the rights of the child, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, racial discrimination, and others. The Committee was inspired by the goal of the universal ratification of the Convention and had invited all States which had not yet done so to come together and join the community.

The Committee then adopted its agenda and programme of work.

A representative of the Secretariat of the Committee said that currently, 166 States had ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, with Brunei, Finland, the Netherland and the Comoros ratifying the treaty since the Committee’s last session in April 2016. Finland had also ratified the Optional Protocol. Since April 2016, the Committee had received initial reports by France, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Switzerland, Togo, Singapore and Georgia. To date, 99 reports had been submitted by States parties and 40 had been reviewed, which left a considerable number of reports pending consideration by the Committee.

Statements by United Nations Agencies

KIRSTIN LANGE, United Nations Interagency Support Group to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, said that it was tasked with advancing the Convention and its implementation, and increasing the scale and effectiveness of United Nations’ involvement in disability issues. The Support Group was made up of over 30 United Nations agencies, together with the International Disability Alliance and the International Disability and Development Consortium. The past six months had seen substantial progress on the inclusion of persons with disabilities in humanitarian action, with the adoption of the Charter on the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Response at the World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016. It was endorsed by more than 140 stakeholders and contained high-level commitments. The Support Group was now working with a coalition of States and civil society to develop globally endorsed guidelines on the inclusion of persons with disabilities in humanitarian action, which would translate into action on the commitments made in the Charter.

JUAN IGNACIO PERES BELLO, Human Rights and Disability Team, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that the Office was continuing its work on the study on the human rights of persons with disabilities with a focus on article 5 on equality and non-discrimination, and on the preparations for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The Office had participated in the World Humanitarian Summit and would continue supporting the development of guidelines on the inclusion of persons with disabilities in humanitarian action. Also, the Office was supporting the Human Rights Council’s Accessibility Task Force, which aimed to improve accessibility in the United Nations Office at Geneva, and had engaged at the ninth Conference of States parties, during which it had promoted its latest report on the human rights of persons with disabilities in situations of risk and humanitarian emergencies. The Office welcomed the election, for the first time, of members with intellectual and hearing impairments which would result in a better diversity among persons with disabilities. The Office was very vocal about the gender imbalance that the Committee would have to face in the next two years and had called upon States parties to the Convention to propose a majority of women candidates for the next elections in two years, in order to correct that imbalance.

RAFAEL FERRAZ VASQUEZ, World Intellectual Property Organization, said that the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled had been ratified by 20 States and would enter into force on 30 September. The World Intellectual Property Organization was strongly engaged in supporting the ratification and implementation of this treaty and the worldwide achievement of its objectives, and the objectives of the Convention, and had held a series of workshops tackling concrete aspects of the implementation of the Marrakesh Treaty. Another way of supporting the delivery of practical benefits of the Marrakesh Treaty was through the Accessible Books Consortium, a multi-stakeholder alliance which undertook initiatives in capacity building and inclusive publishing, as well as maintaining an electronic database for the exchange of accessible titles across national borders.

NICOLETTE MOOTIE, United Nations Children’s Fund, said that the United Nations Children’s Fund and the Washington Group had been finalizing the Child Functioning Module for use in censuses and surveys, which would produce internationally comparable data and would be available in several languages in the fall of 2016. A second module under development, the Inclusive Education Module, aimed to measure school environments and the participation in education by children with and without disabilities; it had three independent components to capture attitudes towards education for all children and especially for children with disabilities, including a component on out-of-school children which aimed at understanding the barriers to school participation. Those data collection tools would provide new opportunities and would strengthen data collection and reporting by countries on children with disabilities as part of the monitoring of the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

ANN BLOOMBERG, UN Women, said that many challenges remained in advancing the rights of women and girls with disability, particularly in addressing intersecting and multiple forms of discrimination they faced. UN Women was pleased to note the inclusion of women with disabilities in the Charter on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action adopted in the World Humanitarian Summit. UN Women continued to work with other United Nations entities to identify initiatives taken to achieve gender equality and identify opportunities for collaboration. In the context of advancing the Beijing Agenda and Platform for Action, Ms. Bloomberg stressed the importance of promoting the empowerment of women with disabilities, including through their participation and full access to leadership positions in all sectors.

GUSTAVO LAURIE, United Nations Mine Action Service, recalled that globally, more than 10 people became victims of landmines and other explosive remnants of war; they had to adapt to living with severe disabilities in conflict or post-conflict settings, where rehabilitation services and support were often weak or inexistent. The 2016 United Nations policy on victim assistance in mine action reflected the evolution of mine action and international humanitarian law in the past decade, promoting an effective and coordinated human rights based approach to victims. The Charter on the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action represented an important step toward ensuring the non-discrimination and diversity of people with disability, including survivors of explosive hazards.

NUMAYR CHOWDURY, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, said that disasters disproportionately affected persons with disabilities and stressed that the implementation of the Sendai Framework was fundamental in assisting States in discharging their responsibilities in ensuring the protection and safety of persons with disabilities in situations of risk. At the same time, the implementation of the Convention was fundamental to the implementation of the Sendai Framework and to the integration of disaster risk into national and local policies across a range of development and humanitarian sectors. The integration of a disability perspective was relevant to the reduction of disaster risk, including through the recognition of the critical importance of persons with disabilities, the investments in infrastructure and tailoring early warning systems to the needs of all users.

ELENA KOUNTOURI TAPIERO, Human Rights Council said that its task force for accessibility to persons with disabilities had been established to study accessibility to persons with disabilities in accordance with international standards. The task force had made the recommendation, which was yet to be implemented, to develop the accessibility plan by the United Nations Office at Geneva in cooperation with persons with disabilities and their representative organizations. The implementation of the plan would have financial implications and it had been recommended to include the costs in the regular United Nations budget. The plan set out priority actions to address existing areas of preventing persons with disabilities from participating and accessing the work of the Human Rights Council and its mechanisms. It also included a series of “quick fixes” to allow for the greater participation of persons with disabilities in the Social Forum to take place in October 2016.

Statements by Civil Society Organizations

VICTORIA LEE, International Disability Alliance said that together with the International Disability and Development Consortium and other partners it had actively advocated for the adoption at the World Humanitarian Summit of the historic Charter on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action. National voluntary reviews of Sustainable Development Goals implementation in 22 countries had been held at the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, which had taken place last month; persons with disabilities had been explicitly mentioned in nine of them. International Disability Alliance lamented the very serious imbalance following the elections of the Committee’s Members in June and said that today, it launched a call to action on gender parity – the GQUAL campaign, which sought to promote gender parity in international tribunals and monitoring bodies and encouraged all to sign on to this call so that the Committee’s legacy of strong women leading its work could be restored.

KASPER BERGMAN, World Federation of the Deaf, said that the key issue was protecting and promoting the right to education, in particular access to education in sign languages, and it was finalising a Position Paper of the Language Rights of Deaf Children. Article 24 of the Convention should not be misread as mandating mainstream schools as the only modality of education for deaf children; there must be a choice in education for deaf children, whichever way would best maximise outcomes for the individual child. They should have the option to be educated in a variety of environments which best fit their linguistic and social needs – which might be mainstream or special schools. The Federation was concerned that deaf children would be swept in an ideological push toward mass placement in mainstream schools, potentially depriving them of their human rights under Article 24. The Federation noted with great concern that no signing deaf person was on the Committee as it drafted its General Comment on Article 24.

INAKI REGUEIRO DE GIACOMI, Inclusion International, urged the Committee, while working on its General Comment on Article 24, to keep in mind the millions of children with intellectual disabilities who were currently out of school and denied quality education. In order for children with intellectual disability to get quality education, they must be educated in regular classes, with non-disabled peers. It was understood that in countries with large populations of children out of school there would never be enough resources to create special schools for children with intellectual disabilities; the only way for them to get an education was for them to be included with all the other children. The same held true in wealthier countries. As long as resources were directed to special programmes – based on gender, ethnicity, refugee status, and labour status – there would not be enough to ensure quality in the mainstream schools. As long as separate schools existed, they drew on resources which were needed in the mainstream system, and it became a false choice for families to choose between a segregated system which had many resources for supporting individual needs and a mainstream system which lacked such resources.

MARIANA MIRANDA, European Network of Independent Living, said that many European countries had started reforms in their social care systems aimed at closing large-scale residential institutions and developing community-based services. However, in many cases the reforms did not lead to full inclusion and participation in the community, but only substituted one type of exclusion with another. At the same time, the deinstitutionalization process was jeopardized by the cuts in public spending, and austerity measures pushed more disabled people into institutional care because of retrenchment of personal assistance and community services. Access to education was one of the pillars of independent living and inclusive education was a key stepping stone for many disabled people towards social inclusion, independent living and being part of the local community. Failure to implement Article 24 undermined the implementation of the entire Convention, as without access to education access to employment and consequently to independent living became impossible.

TANYA WOODS, International Disability and Development Consortium, said that its United Nations Task Group was helping to set up a coordination mechanism for the High-Level Political Forum on behalf of persons with disabilities, including the organization of side events on the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the national review process and early action to leave no one behind. The European Union Task Group was basing its work on the Committee’s concluding observations following the review of the European Union on the implementation of the Convention, and had contributed to the public consultation launched by the European Union on raising awareness on the rights of persons with disabilities in mainstream implementation plans. The Inclusive Education Task Group was conducting research into the financing of disability-inclusive education, looking into its benefits, the current state of financing and what needed to change to realize the aspirations of Article 24. The HIV Task Group played a critical role in getting disability included in the 2016 United Nations Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS and was working to ensure that persons with disabilities were not left behind in the global response to HIV and in sexual and reproductive health rights.



For use of the information media; not an official record

CRPD16/015E