human rights for people with disabilities NEWS

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System for monitoring and promoting human rights for people with

disabilities around the world

10-Aug-2004 News-Medical.Net

Thanks to a $1.2 million grant from the Swedish International

Development ation Agency (SIDA), a York University-based group of

international researchers are pressing ahead with plans to develop a

system for monitoring and promoting human rights for people with

disabilities around the world.

Disability Rights Promotion International (DRPI) received confirmation

earlier this year that its plan for developing monitoring tools and

establishing pilot sites to track the progress of services to people

with disabilities will receive support from the Swedish government. The

group is led by Marcia Rioux, director of York’s graduate program in

Critical Disability Studies and Bengt Lindqvist, former United Nations

Special Rapporteur on disability.

“This funding is wonderful recognition of both the importance of

disability as a human rights issue and York’s position at the forefront

of interdisciplinary research in this field,” Rioux said. “In addition

to the new master’s degree in Critical Disability Studies inaugurated

this year, York has made a concerted attempt at being an accessible

university.”

Rioux’s research into disability as a human rights issue has prompted

three members of the National Human Rights Commission of India to visit

York this week. The committee members will visit faculty and students

Wednesday to discuss their country’s efforts toward integrating

disabilities into a human rights framework and excluding it as grounds

for discrimination.

One of two principal investigators on the DRPI project, Rioux also

chairs the Atkinson School of Health Policy & Management and is director

of York’s Institute for Health Research. She and co-author Ezra Zubrow

recently published Mapping Disability, an atlas of literacy and

disability in Canada that draws on research into services and barriers

from a similar perspective.

“People with disabilities have been traditionally marginalized in

society,” said Rioux. “We need to look at disabilities as a rights issue

and a consequence of social, legal, economic and political barriers.”

The UN estimates that 600 million people, at least 10 per cent of the

world’s population, have some form of disability and face numerous

barriers to full participation in society. The UN recognized inequality

and discrimination related to disability as violations of human rights

in 1998. In 2001, the UN began the process of developing an

international Convention to protect and promote those rights and it is

currently being developed.

DRPI hopes to set up two monitoring sites in Europe and Canada and in

Africa and Latin America that will serve as models for future sites in

other countries. Data collected at each site will be used to create a

world-wide resource for legislators and human rights advocates.

The group has called on other organizations such as the International

Bar Association, Interights, the Commonwealth Legal Education

Association and law schools, including Osgoode Hall Law School at York

University, to assist in developing its strategy. DRPI also plans to

work with global human rights monitor Amnesty International by asking it

to include rights of people with disabilities in its activities.

DRPI plans to launch legal test cases aimed at urging governments to

include provisions for people with disabilities in legislation. This

strategic litigation is one of five areas of focus for monitoring.

Others include individual cases, case law, legislation, media portrayal

of people with disabilities, and government programs, services and

practices.”

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