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Advocates Discuss Creation of Treaty
to Protect Disability Rights The Landmine Survivors Network, in collaboration with disability, human rights, relief and development, religious, and other groups, is mobilizing support for a global campaign to secure a UN Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disability. On December 3 at the World Bank, Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan called for the need to create such a treaty. People with disabilities constitute 10% of the world population. Many are impoverished and live without fundamental dignity and rights. "Lessons learned in our Landmine Ban Treaty Campaign will inform the UN Convention development process," said LSN co-founder Jerry White." More than 300,000 landmine survivors and millions of other people with disability cannot find work, are denied an education, are forbidden to inherit or own land, are ostracized, and are held without consent in hospitals and sanatoriums because it is believed that disability pollutes society." The World Bank, with the leadership of the global development community, has declared that the time is now to address the poverty and marginalization of disabled people. The World Bank has reported that, "The combination of poverty and disability is a fearsome one. Either one may cause the other, and their presence in combination has a tremendous capacity to destroy the lives of people with impairments and impose on their family's burdens that are too crushing to bear." In honor of the Dec. 3 conference the International Day for the Disabled, the Center for International Rehabilitation/Physicians Against Landmines co-sponsored a Dance Celebration on Dec. 2 at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. Mikhail Baryshnikov, Nadia Adame, and Jaques Poulin-Denis of AXIS Dance Company performed. An award was presented to Senator Thomas Harkin (D-IA) in recognition of his work on behalf of people with disabilities. See http://www.landminesurvivors.org/stories/article.php?id=169 for more information. |
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