Today, with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the human rights of persons with disabilities are finally recognized, and their application is progressing. Disability is becoming an issue in more and more places and the concern of more and more organizations … and suddenly, a crowd of experts, plans, programs, researches are using the budget lines we, people “with disabilities”, have obtained from the governments and funding agencies.
This is the process, and DPI can be proud that disability is now a political issue of societies and that their needs are absorbed by the market. But, does that mean that oppression is going to stop? We all know that it is not. Oppression is not going to be stopped - only redirected. And even with the advancements of our human rights, the results are the same as they were: people with disabilities are controlled and exploited by others, and when it is by those who take care of you it is more difficult to fight against. How can I critisize those who want my best? The reality is that a lot of our wins are converted into advances by and for providers and / or users. A simple and common, example is the plight of wheelchair users who, on entering public accessible buses, can not find a place in the middle of the too many prams and packages that passengers, making use of the “wheelchair accessible” spaces, can now carry with them freely.
Then we have participation or inclusion in discussions and decision-making initiatives, but in many countries, and even more in developped countries that have an efficient social insurance system, the majority of the DPOs are represented at meetings by non-disabled directors, parents, and social partners such as trade unions or family organizations. And, when some persons with disabilities successfully fight to get into these meetings, they have to find the financial support they need for travel or compensation for their participation. The result is that the two or three persons with disabilities around the table are often the only ones who don't get any financial support for their travel and who don’t get any salary or compensation for their time. The fact is that the representation of citizens with disabilities is not based on a democratic basis but on economic criteria. The non democratic world is not always where we think it is!
This is the result of policies which talk about participation, but then forget to put it into practice; and I challenge each person here to identify a national policy of inclusion and participation anywhere in the world which not only looks good on paper, but puts financial and political support behind it to ensure it is enforced by trainings of experts and supports devoted to their impactive interventions in the sectors of the societies they live. I don’t know of any concrete examples, and I am impatient to discover some.
Is not today the time to fight not only for the recognition of our rights, but for their enforcement? The time to convince is past. It is now time to educate citizens on Human Rights respect due to the people with disablilities as to each human being, to respect our maner to live, our ways of expressing, our fragilities and our capabilities.
The best educators are people with disabilities themselves. Their lived experiences and knowledge are resources that have to be recognized, taken into account and used in a democratic and rights- based approach. Such use of human resources is indicative of politic participation.
A politic of participation is a politic that supports individual empowerment, social representation and civil democratic organisation - a politic that put in practice the DPI slogan which is now that of the CRDP Forum and persons with disabilities around the world - “Nothing about us without us”. This does not mean that persons with disabilities and their representative organizations have to be associates only to the decision. Rather, it means that people with disabilities have to be partners of the project at all the stages, from the decision to the application, from the planning to the evaluation
Just as they need to learn from people with disabilities to effectively implement the CRPD, states and stakeholders need to learn from people with disabilities living in poverty, the measures that need to be taken to ensure their inclusion in the benefits of the Millennium Development Goals and how to effectively apply those measures.
People with disabilities, living largely in poverty, must not be seen as part of the problem – but as a vital part of the solution. The Millennium Development Goals can not, and will not, succeed unless persons with disabilities are fully and completely included.
DPI Europe Chairperson