Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has welcomed the entry into force of the first international treaty on the human rights of persons with disabilities, after the required twentieth country ratified the landmark convention today.
“It is a historic moment in our quest for realization of the universal human rights for ALL persons, creating a fully inclusive society for all,” Mr. Ban’s spokesperson Marie Okabe said in a statement celebrating the rapid progress of the Convention on the rights of Persons with Disabilities, which was adopted in December 2006.
“The Convention will be a powerful tool to eradicate the obstacle faced by persons with disabilities,” she said, pointing to discrimination, segregation from society, economic marginalization, and lack of opportunities for participation in social, political and economic decision-making processes.
Today’s ratification by Ecuador means that the Convention, along with an optional protocol that will allow individuals and groups to petition for relief, will be legally binding as of 3 May. Tunisia and Jordan also ratified the treaty earlier this week.
Through today’s statement, the Secretary-General also congratulated the States that have ratified or acceded to the Convention. Some 126 countries have signed the Convention since 30 March 2007, and 71 have signed the optional protocol.
“It is estimated that there are at least 650 million persons with disabilities worldwide, of whom approximately 80 percent live in less developed countries,” Ms. Okabe noted.
As many as two-thirds of United Nations Member States do not have any legal protection for people with disabilities, according to the UN Focal Point on Disability Akiko Ito , even though they comprise one in 10 of the global population.
“The Convention, together with its Optional Protocol, is deeply rooted in the firm commitment of the international community to rectifying the egregious neglect and dehumanizing practices that violate the human rights of persons with disabilities,” Ms. Okabe concluded, calling on all States that have not yet done so to accede or ratify it without delay.
In a statement issued this past weekend, more than 20 UN departments, agencies, programmes, and funds pledged their support to implementing the convention.
The newly-formed Inter-Agency Support Group for the Convention said that support will focus on six main areas: policies to support the purpose and objectives of the Convention; programmes including international cooperation; capacity-building of Member States , civil society, and the UN system; research and access to knowledge on disabilities; accessibility; and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
From Australia ... from the USA ... from India ... from New Zealand ... from Fiji ... from the Philippines ...
Writers and bloggers from around the world joined together to help celebrate and promote the first legally binding international human rights instrument to protect the rights of people with disabilities -- the international disability rights treaty, called the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
What did they write about? Some of the topics include ...
... The story of one advocate who watched the birth of the CRPD among grassroots advocates with disabilities and others in the 1990s ... ... How the CRPD could deliver new hope for people in India with mental disabilities ... ... How the CRPD represents an evolution from the charity/medical model of disability to the social or human rights-based model ... ... How the CRPD could make travel go a little more smoothly for tourists with disabilities ... ... Why the CRPD matters for people who use personal assistance services or who are seeking the freedom to explore their own sexual expression ... ... An allegorical tale about farmers, spoons, and plows: Why the CRPD is well worth celebrating and why our work isn't done just because the CRPD is about to take full legal force ... ... And more ...
All at the RatifyNow CRPD Blog Swarm 2008, and all available by following the link to:
Celebrate and learn about the CRPD through the RatifyNow CRPD Blog Swarm 2008.
Then invite other people to do the same. Please circulate this notice or post it at your blog or web site -- with, of course, a link to the blog swarm at
Barack Obama issued a statement outlining the "disability plank" of his platform in his 2008 bid for the Whitehouse. As you can see by watching the video below, Obama is now the disability candidate of choice...
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." -Margaret Mead
Dear Fellow Advocates/Activists,
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has acheived groundbreaking international support since it opened for signatures on March 30, 2007. As of today, 118 nations have taken the first step and become signatories to the Convention & 7 have gone further and ratified it. The Optional Protocol, which will serve as the treaty's enforcement mechanism, has enjoyed 67 signatures and 3 ratifications. The Convention requires 20 ratifying member nations before it can enter into force and become international law.
Despite this monumental accomplishment of 21st century civilization, which largely included people with disabilities from all over the world, the Bush Administration has failed to sign the Convention on behalf of the US. At this point, the disability community is looking to build support in both the House and Senate in preparation for what we hope to be a speedy signing and ratification of this historic Convention with the new administration in early 2009.
Click Take Action to tell your congressional delegation that you want them to actively support this progressive piece of human rights legislation, and move it through the ratification process quickly.
Also, disability community leaders, organizations, activists, and advocates from across our country have joined together to create the RatifyNow.org website, to educate and encourage grassroots ratification efforts. Check it out!
So, now our focus needs to be on the Senate... and we need to encourage each of our delegations to sign onto S 1881 ASAP! Congress is beginning to realize that the disability community is a strong political demographic that supports this historic civil rights legislation. Take a minute now and make your voice heard.
Click "Take Action" to urge your Senator to become a co-sponsor.
On October 30, 2007, the first meeting of ADAPT of Oregon was held at Independent Living Resources... the minutes of the meeting can be found here… several topics were discussed and we welcome input from the community as we forge this latest chapter in the ADAPT saga!
We have also created a Google group so folks can more easily stay up to date on what is happening at ADAPT of Oregon… please use the form below to join the group… if you have trouble joining the group, need other assistance, or simply have comments or suggestions for us, please direct them to Joe VanderVeer at
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Mr. Thomas J. Donohue
President and CEO
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
1615 H Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20062-2000
Dear Mr. Donohue:
We are in receipt of the letter of August 22, 2007 from the Chamber of Commerce opposing H.R. 3195, the ADA Restoration Act. As you know, H.R. 3195 currently has 203 cosponsors, including 162 Democrats and 41 Republicans. As with the original ADA, we are honored to be leaders of this bipartisan effort. We are surprised by the content of the letter and we would like to allay a number of your fears about this piece of legislation. As an initial matter, please note that this bill is not designed to improve all aspects of the ADA. Rather, H.R. 3195 is intended to do one simple thing: restore the rights of those whom we had always intended to be covered by the definition of disability.
As Members of Congress who were active in the development of the original ADA, and who fully understood what we intended to do when we created and passed the law, we can reassure you that H. R. 3195 is not a wholesale rewriting of the ADA. Our bill simply makes the language of the ADA definition more clear. We never intended for people with disabilities - or, for that matter, their employers - to spend inordinate amounts of time and legal fees parsing out whether a person is disabled "enough" to be protected under the ADA. It is particularly counter-intuitive for such parsing to take place in the courts after an employer has explicitly acknowledged that an adverse decision has been taken on the basis of a person's physical or mental impairment.
Unfortunately, this is the type of activity that we have seen in the courts because of the courts' misreading of our statutory text in the original ADA. The result of such activity by lawyers and courts has been devastating for people with disabilities. As you surely recognize, most people whom we fully intended to be protected from unfair discrimination in employment are often not covered today because of court decisions that have narrowly interpreted the definition of disability.
In July of 1776, the bell of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall rang to summon Americans to the birth of an independent nation. On that bell were cast the words from Leviticus: “Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”
Americans value freedom. Americans value independence.
The people from my home state of Montana have an independent spirit. They take pride in taking care of themselves.
But not all Americans have the freedom to live independently. People with disabilities and the elderly — especially those who are also poor — face barriers to living independently. They face barriers to living where they choose. They face barriers to traveling across town.
For this article, The New York Times analyzed trends at nursing homes purchased by private investment groups by examining data available from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Times examined more than 1,200 nursing homes purchased by large private investment groups since 2000, and more than 14,000 other homes. The analysis compared investor-owned homes against national averages in multiple categories, including complaints received by regulators, health and safety violations cited by regulators, fines levied by state and federal authorities, the performance of homes as reported in a national database known as the Minimum Data Set Repository and the performance of homes as reported in the Online Survey, Certification and Reporting database.
Habana Health Care Center, a 150-bed nursing home in Tampa, Fla., was struggling when a group of large private investment firms purchased it and 48 other nursing homes in 2002.
The facility’s managers quickly cut costs. Within months, the number of clinical registered nurses at the home was half what it had been a year earlier, records collected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services indicate. Budgets for nursing supplies, resident activities and other services also fell, according to Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration.
