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CONVENTION CAME INTO FORCE ON SATURDAY 3rd MAY 2008
Welcome
...to the Human Rights & Disability web site (previously just known as: 'un-convention.info'), the UK's only site dedicated to promoting disabled people's human rights and fundamental freedoms.
First launched as a way of keeping disabled Britons informed about negotiation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, since UK signature of the Convention - on 30 March 2007 - the site is being expanded to provide a wider human rights resource for disabled people, wherever they live.
If you have any comments or suggestions, please do not hesitate to send a message - there is a "Contact Me" link at the foot of every page on the site.
NEW: Please sign the Number 10 Petition
As some of you may know, Number 10 has set up an online petition system, intended to indicate public support for particular issues.
There is now a petition on UK ratification of the UN Disability Convention, which reads as follows:
'We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and sign the optional protocol without delay.'
Please follow this link and sign the petition which, at the time of writing, contains less than 2.000 signatures.... time to change that please!
UPDATE
There is now an amended petition, calling for ratification without reservations; you can read - and sign - the petition by following this link.
Core values
In an introductory document on disability and human rights, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights notes that there are four core values of human rights law that are ´of particular importance in the context of disability´
I would encourage you to make these core values the foundation stone for all your advocacy and campaigning efforts, as I have for my own.
'The four core values of human rights law are:
- the dignity of each individual, who is deemed to be of inestimable value because of his/her inherent self-worth, and not because s/he is economically or otherwise “useful”
- the concept of autonomy or self-determination, which is based
on the presumption of a capacity for self-directed action and
behaviour [, and requires that the
person be placed at the centre of all decisions affecting
him/her];
1 - the inherent equality of all regardless of difference;
- and the ethic of solidarity, which requires society to sustain the freedom of the person with appropriate social supports.
Note:
1 I am reluctant to endorse the text that is in square brackets and italics, however, as the wording lends itself to an over-eagerness for assuming that disabled people need to have decisions made for us.
Anne McGuire M.P., Minister for Disabled People, signing the
Disability Convention on 30 March 2007
