COSP3 - day 3

Day 3, Friday 3 September 2010. 10.15am. Hello everyone – we’re 45 minutes late starting, which seems to be the norm. Also I have a meeting elsewhere at midday so need to leave here at 11.30am. Yesterday a commenter on the blog said that it was not so interesting to read that I had a chicken salad for lunch, so this commenter will be pleased to know I had a multi-grain bagel with cream cheese for breakfast. Today it’s cooler, but the big news is that hurricane Earl is heading to NYC! Some delegates are worried about getting home (but secretly hoping they are ‘stranded’ in New York. Macy’s is just up the road). The speakers’ names are not on the web, so I won’t be able to reproduce them. Today’s session is on what the UN is doing to promote the CRPD. The first speakers is from the Statistics Bureau. She says that they are providing guidance on disability stats, and mainstreaming disability into the MDGs. She says that that’s are very difficult to get – countries apply different criteria when collecting data or do not collect data at all. Comparative stats, let alone disaggregation by socio-economic status, are not possible. This is a barrier to providing evidence for policies and programmes. She says that there is a UN census, not just a national census, and that the UN encourages States to carry out a census every ten years. Out of 75 countries, 52 countries included disability in their questionnaire and 43 use a cross-set of disability questions as the UN recommends. That doesn’t sound too brilliant to me. 10:30am. A representative of OHCHR (Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: www.ohchr.org) now takes the floor. She speaks about national monitoring of the CRPD, the topic of MDAC’s side event yesterday (http://www.mdac.info/content/cosp3-side-event-art-33) and an ongoing project of ours. Domestic monitoring of human rights treaties, she says, is largely unprecedented, apart from the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture. She speaks about Article 33 which you can read about in MDAC’s policy paper prepared for this meeting: http://www.mdac.info/en/webfm_send/38. The next debate and study will be on Art. 32 on international cooperation. 10:40am. A World Bank rep takes the floor. She points to a CD which was put on delegates’ tables (but not NGOs’ tables, I note!) containing a review of disability and international cooperation and the experience of Italian cooperation of including disability in international cooperation. She gives some basics of the World Bank – ‘many of you sitting in this room have benefited from World Bank financial of technical assistance’. Based on demand, she tells us, the World Bank will be producing a toolkit on disability social insurance. World Bank doing a study on mental health of girls and women in post-conflict countries, but haven’t chosen the country yet. 10.55am. Presentation by UHCHR. Disability is increased in conflict through injury and disaster. He says that people with disabilities are subject to the same risks as other refugees and IDPs, and that they remain invisible and it is difficult to identify their specific needs. This is a very interesting presentation and I hope the slides will be put online as I can’t keep up with the facts and figures. This was an impressive presentation: practical, snappy, integrated and fresh. 11.15am. There are some interventions from delegates: one saying that the UN's website should become accessible asap, and that there should be more creativity with regard to mainstreaming. It's not often you hear the words creativity and UN in one sentence. 11.25am. The Internaitonal Coordinating Committte of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) takes the floor and reads a statement from the ICC. It's Valentin who is the head of Germany's Art. 33(2) monitoring body. He was at our side event yesterday. Valentin talks about the role of independent NHRIs to monitoring implementation of the Convention. He cites the Paris Principles (http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/parisprinciples.htm). He says that the ICC regrets that despite the many ratifications, only a few States have designated an independent monitoring mechanism, and encourages States to provide these bodies with sufficient resources. He calls upon the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to take a robust approach to monitoring States in carrying out their obligations, and calls on States to meet the Committee's request for more financial support for greater meeting time. He calls on govs to build the capacity of NGOs to participate in the monitoring of the implementation. NHRIs are, he says, are committed to working with DPOs to develop the most inclusive and effective ways to undertake those monitoring responsiblities. A great statement - echoing MDAC's advocacy on the topic! 11.30am. I have to leave now to go for a meeting. It's been a strange meeting: first day was spent on elections, the second day squashed two days into one, and we held a side event. And this morning has been a string of presentations by UN agencies which has been quite interesting. It's the day before labor weekend and delegates are itching to leave. Hurricane Earl is on its way and I don't have an umbrella. Thanks for reading the blog.