COSP3 - day 2

MDAC is hosting a side session at 4.30pm in collaboration with the Office of Disability Issues in the UK and the Independent Monitoring Committee for the Implementation of the CRPD in Austria on ‘Ensuring meaningful participation of people with intellectual disabilities and psycho-social disabilities in implementing Article 33 of the CRPD’. You can also read a policy paper on Article 33 which we have produced.

4pm. The representative of the United States, Judith Heumann - Special Advisor for International Disability Rights to Secretary Clinton - mentions that President Obama has signed the CRPD and is preparing a ‘package of transmission’ to the Senate for treaty ratification. She mentions Olmstead (see below) with pride. With regard to Art. 24, she says that ‘education is the vector of all human development’. She explains that there is a federal law reach to education, despite the fact that it is largely State-led. The rep of Nigeria says that the gov is working very hard to ensure ratification and says there is a ‘great reawakening and awareness of the needs of people with disabilities by government bodies, corporate bodies and international partners.’ Interesting. He says that parents can be a barrier to inclusive ed, as they ‘prefer to send their children with disabilities to beg’. The rep of Niger says, erm, sorry I was chatting to someone and I missed some of what she said. She says that challenges are attitudes of education to combat ignorance, educating ine4stablishing association and efforts to enhance involvement of people with disabilities. The rep from Israel says that progress must be achieved with the critical participation of people with disabilities. She says that many former psychiatric patients are now living in the community and that shopping and cultural events and so on are done in regular community settings. Next up is the rep from Columbia but I have to leave now, as our side event on Article 33 is starting in 20 mins and I have to go up to the room and prep!

3.40pm. I hope you are enjoying the statements from States Parties. It is interesting how different the interventions are. A colleague has just observed that in those countries without a free media, the interventions are inward-looking, so that the domestic media can tomorrow report on what their Ambassador has said at the United Nations. The format is weird because some State reps have asked questions but I am not sure whether there will be time for consideration, and to discuss these points. Much of this is a list of marvellous successes, solid plans, unstoppable dedication and full support for the CRPD. Where’s the added value?!

 

Qatar says that there were several workshops and that they celebrated the international day on people with disabilities, that the gov is working on integration in education. The rep from China says she is a blind professor and that she is vice-chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (note that this committee is supposed to be composed of INDEPENDENT experts. By making the intervention on behalf of the State, this person has now confirmed that she indeed still takes instructions from the Chinese government. How will the newly-elected Committee members deal with this situation?). She says that there is a lot which other countries can learn from China: including in education – which she says is special education and the government is ‘trying’ to work towards inclusion to build a harmonious society. She asks a question to the UN Special Rapporteur and asks him how States can overcome his five barriers. It’s a valid question, echoing my critique of the SR’s presentation (see post below at 11am) and I hope the SR answers it! The rep from Sweden provides some data about support measures and personal assistance.

 

The European Union (which has not ratified yet but has signed) says that they have submitted some documents European disability strategy 2010-2020 to ensure full implementation of the CRPD, which will include community living and transitioning as priority actions. The EU actions will support Member State actions to transition from institutions to community, including social and cohesion funds to adapt social infrastructures. He also says that the EU is committed to mainstream ed and training. In November there will be a meeting dedicated to the implementation of Article 33 (national implementation and monitoring). His question is ‘what can we do to further distribute the knowledge which we gained during this COSP on the implementation of the relevant articles of the Convention?’

3.20pm. The rep from Kenya says that five days ago the country promulgated the new Constitution which promulgates education as a fundamental right, including children with disabilities and assures delegates that Kenya is at the forefront of CRPD implementation. The rep of UAE sends his ‘greetings, peace and God’s blessings’ to the Chair and says there is an initiative called ‘school for all’ in which 100% children with disabilities will be in inclusive education by the end of 2010. Currently there are 1,398 children in special ed. Wow, that’s quite a plan (if I heard it correctly). Nicaragua is up next and its rep says that the Ministry of Ed is developing inclusive ed. The Chair remarks with approval that the Nicaraguan intervention was less than three minutes. The Korean delegate then expresses its ‘sincere appreciation’ to the panellists and says that the social model helped them create a paradigm shift. There you go! Malawi then says there’s a draft equalization of opportunities of people with disability bill and she rattles off a range of other things which the Malawi government is ‘working tirelessly’ before pointing out that there is a lack of resources, calls on international partners, and asks whether the transition from special schooling to inclusive schooling should be gradual. India is up next and says that ed is crucial, and that a 1995 law does the job, that the government has set up a committee to harmonise laws with the CRPD.

 

3pm. I had a chicken salad for lunch and am now cooped up in conference room 4. Here we go with the afternoon sesh. First up there is San Marino whose rep says that they are committed to implementation. Then Serbia has done an ‘extensive harmonization of national legislation’. Germany’s rep says in relation to Art. 19 much has been achieved by Germany in the last decade, and that out-patient services take precedence over in-patient. Personal budgeting also, she says, is in place where by beneficiaries can combine benefits provided by several sponsors. There has not been 100% de-institutionalisation in Germany so far: the question to other States Parties are whether there roadmaps or best-practice examples which they could share. Good point – let’s get some promising practices out there and available! New Zealand’s rep says ‘it seems we need a paradigm shift’, which, I think, is true for all States. She talks about budgets, broad ramnge of services, and monitoring services in terms of outcomes experienced by persons with disabilities. She wants best practices about moving towards full inclusion in all schools.

1pm. South Africa is next up. He says that CRPD implementation is guided by the government’s priorities: health, education, jobs, rural development and crime prevention. He says that the policy on inclusive education is based on Art. 24 of CRPD.

Mauritius takes the floor and lists a string of achievements over the last few years: promoting welfare, training of employment, pensions and other wonderful-sounding policies. She’d like funding to move from special to inclusive education.

 

The Chairperson says that there are 14 more speakers, and that the afternoon sesh will begin at 3pm and speakers will have max 3 minutes each! Ok I am running to get a sandwich. Bye!

12:35pm. The Italian rep takes the floor. Buongiorno raggazi! Italy has, apparently, drafted a white paper on accessibility. He says accessibility should be ‘a natural choice’ – am not sure what this means. It is not clear how is this relevant to independent living or inclusive ed, but thank you and arrivaderci!

 

Jamaica’s rep says that he was particularly moved by Senada Halilcevic’s presentation. He reminds delegates that Jamaica was the first country to sign the CRPD and there’s some audience applause. Bring it on! Two developments in Jamaica are of relevance, he says. First, on legislation to protect the rights on persons with disabilities, including lifting a ban on deaf people from driving. Second, there’s a centre for disability studies at a university which is developing a model for a global disability index to track progress and rank member states compliance with the CRPD. That sounds like a project and a half. I look forward to hearing more about it.

 

Costa Rica is up next. Their rep congratulates the speakers and reiterates her country’s commitment to CRPD implementation. She says there’s a bill in congress on independent living and gives two examples on commissions for local government and something else, and a commitment to higher education being no less than eight per cent of GDP. I am getting a bit hypoglycaemic.

 

The rep of Thailand says that his country was also one of the first countries which signed the CRPD but it took over a year to transform domestic laws. He says ‘Education systems should tolerate integrated and specialised services and that inclusive education will guarantee inclusion in society’ by which I think he is supporting inclusive education (which is not integrated or special).  

 

The representative from Sudan tells delegates ‘in the name of God, the most merciful’ that there is a disarmament programme and an educational and economic program for the disabled who have been disbanded. He says that the President of Sudan (against whom the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant, but the representative does not mention this) has endorsed the Convention. The representative tells us about how the government is securing participation in society. It sounds like a wonderful country to live in if one is a person with disabilities. He calls for an international community to lift the unilateral blockade as the consequences are against the vulnerable people. 

Now the representative of Turkeytakes the floor. He says he is blind, has started to learn English a short time ago and can’t express himself very well (his English is very good!). He says he entered into the Guinness Book of Records recently for doing something quickly (I didn’t catch what) to prove that disabled people can achieve anything they wish. Turkey wants to ‘establish a world union of handicapped persons in Istanbul, to create a network of world NGOs’ He says they have established a ‘world handicapped foundation’ and there will be a world handicapped forum in December 2010. I don’t get it at all – I wonder what IDA thinks about this?!

 

12.20pm. The rep of Chile is the first to grab the mike. She says that interesting things are going on in Hungary (!). It’s then an account of the reforms in Chile and she says that Chileans are ‘pioneers in creating accessible cities’. It sounds fantastic.

 

The Mexican rep takes the floor. Buenos dias! She wants to support Ana Palaez to create a special fund for education. In rural Mexico education inclusion, she says, also means transport to get people with disabilities from their homes to schools. What I heard is that Mexico would like some money from abroad to do inclusive education.

 

The Brazilian rep says that his country is completely committed to the CRPD. Inclusion means putting kids with disabilities in regular classes with supports. He says that the main challenge States are facing is implementing the Convention. He flags Articles 21 and 30(3). These are about intellectual property rights. He says that Mexico is working to open up the works currently protected by copyright into accessible formats. Less than five percent of works are available accessible formats! The draft WIPO treaty is advancing but it needs more support from States. This is a Really Big Issue and he makes the point convincingly. Nice one.

 

Canada’s rep is up and says it is pleased to have ratified the CRPD on 11 March this year (about time too!). She rails off how Canada was one of the States which spearheaded the negotiations. She says that Canada has strong human rights legislation and has a number of programmes specifically on disability [cue Canadian national anthem]. She switches suddenly into French and continues en francais with a list of the legislation and policies which respect and promote the rights of people with disabilities. She says she would be pleased to hear about new methods of communication including sign language and promotion of linguistic identity within the community. What do other State Parties get out of this sort of intervention? 

12.00pm. Now its Senada Halilcevic who is from Croatia and is a Board Member of Inclusion Europe. Senada tells her life story – as an institutionalised girl, to a person who sought out alternatives and now lives in the community. She says that in the institution staff chose everything for her – everything was provided: food, clothes and a roof over your head. They told her, ‘You have a better life here.’ She’s been living in the community for 3½ years and says it was difficult at first: she had to learn a lot of new things and needed a lot of support, but today she has minimum support. Senada says that the CRPD hasn’t been fully implemented in many countries and Article 19 should be implemented asap. It’s great to hear from someone who can speak about former experiences in institutions. Again, a great educational experience, I am sure, for many of the State representatives.

 

Ádám Kósa closes this panel and invites the reps from Jordan and South Africa to moderate a Q&A on both right to ed and right to live in the community.

 

11.50am. Now it’s Steven M. Eidelman who is a professor at the University of Delaware. He says that institutions are not defined by their size, and that meaningful lives cannot be had in an institution. Service and care is not about real estate. He makes the point that you can’t be part of the community whilst being institutionalised, and that physical presence in the community does not mean inclusion.   

11.30am. Okey dokey we are now on roundtable 2, which is on the right to live in the community which you can find in Article 19 of the CRPD. The session is opened by Ádám Kósa from Hungary. Ádám is the president of the Hungarian association of people who are deaf and hard of hearing (SINOSZ) which is one of MDAC’s partner organisations. He is a Member of the European Parliament. Ádám is signing using (I think) Hungarian sign language. He makes the point that EU Structural Funds have been used on renovating institutions and says that the EU should cooperate with national parliaments to play a decisive role in the reform of legislation. His presentation is crisp and clear.

 

Mr. Mohammed Al Tarawaneh (Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) is the first speaker. He says Article 19 says two things: the right to take part in the community, and the right to choose how to live. He makes the point that people are sometimes forced to live in institutions. He cites Olmstead, a 1993 US Supreme Court decision on institutionalisation as discrimination. The rest of his presentation is a rehash of what the Convention says. If I were a representative of a State Party to the Convention I’d be left hungry.

 

11.10am. Now it’s Ms. Ana Pelaez who is from Spain and is a member of the CRPD Committee. She makes a few good points: universal access to teaching material, assistive technologies. Concert special schools into centres for support and inclusive education. Ensure standardized access for all kids. She is the first speaker to point out the gender gap in ed. The stats on this are alarming. ‘Less than 5 per cent of children and young persons with disabilities have access to education and training; and girls and young women face significant barriers to participating in social life and development’ (Secretary-General of the United Nations in his report on the Implementation of the World Programme of Action concerning Disabled, A/56/169, paragraph 79). ‘The global literacy rate for adults with disabilities is as low as 3 per cent, and 1 per cent for women with disabilities, according to a 1998 UNDP study’ (UN DPI fact sheet). That’s the end of ‘roundtable 1’ on inclusive ed. I think the right to live in the community is up next. There will be a bit of a break whilst people shuffle on and off the podium.

 

11.00am. Here’s Shybe Chalklen who is from South Africa and who is the UN Special Rapporteur on Disability. Exclusion from ed leads to exclusion in adulthood. In Malawi there’s 50 or more learners per classroom and the quality of ed suffers. He points out that many ed policies were developed prior to the CRPD and need to be revised. He says that negative attitudes and lack of professional support are barriers to inclusive ed in South Africa, and that NGOs provide rehabilitation services where these are not provided in schools. He lists a number of key barriers: these are (1) a lack of awareness, (2) a lack of political will, (3) accessibility to environment and teaching materials, (4) a lack of support from teachers and unions and (5) a lack of understanding of legal frameworks

 

This was an interesting presentation which stayed at the descriptive level: things are bad and there’s a gap between the CRPD and reality. The presentation was not addressed to/at States parties. He is An Important Person and could have used his authority to focus on the lack of political will. The people who lack political will are sitting right here in the room. Where’s the call to action?

 

10:50am. I wonder what these sessions are designed to achieve. It appears that the speakers have been given ten minutes each. I guess it’s really difficult to resist the temptation to rattle out so much information which States may need. I don’t think it works, though. It would be more useful to have a few key learning points, or information which can be shared, and invite the States to reflect on those, or link up with speakers afterwards.

 

Now the Chair passes to the South African representative who introduces Mr. Markku Jokinen from the World Federation of the Deaf. He’s speaking in sign language, and on the two massive screens in the room there is a person who is also signing and there is CART, which I find incredibly helpful. This sort of presentation is fantastic because seeing a person with disabilities is a fantastic way to break down prejudices which members of the audience may have.

 

Mr Jokinen makes the point that lack of sign language in education, as well as accessibility of signing in every day life deprive deaf people from accessing chunks of life. A bilingual approach, he says, is great as it preserves people’s cultural identity, maximises education and promotes inclusion. Deaf kids need to be included by their most appropriate language and culture. Only Venezuela says that the bilingual approach is the only one which they use. Many countries do not fulfil the CRPD standards. Signing should be taught as a language in the curriculum: all this is backed up by research and examples of a bilingual approach. He says it can be carried out within the mainstream educational system by using the method of language immersion: reverse inclusion! That was a great presentation. I learned a lot.

 

10:40am. The next speaker is from the World Bank. She is replacing Robert Prouty but I didn’t catch her name. The speaker is talking really quickly and I can hardly mentally keep up, let alone type up some of her main points. She is flicking through power points: 61% reduction of out of school children / 7 out of 10 children are out of school / 10 to 12 % in low income countries / reading 60 words a minute / screening / strategies / learning disabilities / eligibility for FTI resources /complexities / and lots lots more. The PowerPoint title is ‘Still much to do’ which perhaps sums it up.  The next slide says ‘EFA FTI and Disability’, and here I am going to disclose that I don’t know what those acronyms stand for [Oliver braces himself for an influx of emails from education experts]. The speaker gallops through an example in Cambodia and ends on a plea for people to work collaboratively. I couldn’t agree more.   

10:30am. Now it’s on to the panel presentations. The panellists are introduced: Ms. Maria Soledad Cisternas Reyes (Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities), Mr. Robert Prouty (World Bank), Mr. Markku Jokinen (World Federation of the Deaf), Mr. Shybe Chalklen (UN Special Rapporteur on Disability) and Ms. Ana Pelaez (Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities).

 

Maria Soledad Cisternas Reyes makes the point that the CRPD’s stance on ed is inclusion. Quotation of the presentation: ‘One can’t talk about quality of education without talking about inclusion.’ If there’s no reasonable accommodation there’s discrimination. Diversification, curriculum adaptation and personal supports are examples of reasonable accommodation. She says that supports are related to Art. 12(3). Linking education to the ethos behind legal capacity in Article 12 is a good point. People tend to siphon Article 12 off to adults. Her point is augmented by looking at one of the core principles of the Convention which is ‘[r]espect for the evolving capacities of children with disabilities’ (Art.4 (h)).

 

10am. Ok here we go, only 45 minutes late. This session is on inclusive education, which you can find in Article 24 of the CRPD. The UN has produced a background paper which you can find here. H.R.H. Prince Raad bin Zeid Al-Hussein (Jordan) opens and talks about inclusive education. Quotation of the speech: ‘It is only when we accept our own limitations that we can go beyond them’ (Albert Einstein). He stresses the right to ed must be quality ed. Now it’s the turn of a representative of the South African government who says new schools will be accessible to kids with disabilities (and presumably teachers, staff and parents with disabilities?).

 

7.30am. Thursday 2 September 2010. Up early for a breakfast meeting on inclusive education litigation. Will be blogging from the UN from circa 10am. I'll upload the results from the last bit of the election which I missed. Yesterday's afternoon session on the right to live in the community didn't happen, so they're squashing it into today. Plus there's today's programme to squash into today, and of course the highlight: MDAC's side event on Article 33 which is scheduled for 4.30pm. Weather forecasters predict highs of 33 degrees celcius. In the meantime you could make me an iced-coffee please and check out MDAC on Facebook where people are busy congratulating Gabor on being elected to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities!