Today, DPI is facing new challenges that will determine its future. After spending a lot of time, expertise, finance and energy on the Convention discussions over the last 5 years, and we have succeed to a great degree within the Convention, we have to identify new aims and strategies on how the Convention, and its optional Protocol, is to be ratified and implemented in our own countries and regions and we need to meet regularly so that we can continue to transform positively the life of millions people who are still suffering from many kinds of discriminations because they are who they are.
We have won a lot this last thirty years but he job is not yet accomplished.
In Europe, we obtain the creation of the European Disability Forum, the non discrimination Article in the Amsterdam Treaty and two Directives, new laws in some EU Countries, new standards, a European Year and a ten Years Action plan … At the world level, we have won the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, but we never have to forget that we just made the easiest part of the travel. Yes, it is easier to live in a wheelchair or as a blind person in some countries. Yes, the situation is a little better for some of us, but there are still millions of peoples who are suffering because their potentials are denied, because they don’t receive any education or a so called ‘special education’ that it makes them unable to live in society. Yes, the medical sciences progress may give us better conditions in life … but the sciences progress is also building some tools which are dangerous for us and for humanity when its aims seem to be contributing to eliminate people or potential peoples on the basis of an evaluation of their quality of life.
We need to empower ourselves because our actions are opening new markets and new job opportunities means we will have to be strong as representatives of the people, as clients, business managers, workers or citizens with different abilities.
We have to continue to be active for the implementation of all our rights. We must assist and empower our peers to make enable them to understand and control all of these new mechanisms, we have to continue to lobby our European Deputies to obtain a European directive and better legal protections, we must make these rights accessible for everybody, whatever their abilities, and especially for the millions of European who not have the possibility to express by themselves and who are still categorized “unable”, “non capable” or “disabled”.
We must continue to show the world that our quality of life is not dependent on others perceptions but on the diversity of our opinions and our abilities. The contextual elements of all societies must ensure that the diversity within them is enriching our society that must be accessible and inclusive for all.
Jean-Luc Simon
DPI Europe Chair