Human Rights in Ireland

December 3rd 2010 marks the 13th anniversary of the UN International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Over the years, the United Nations has celebrated the day under a number of themes, which have included independent living, decent work for people with disabilities and arts and culture. The theme for 2010 is “Mainstreaming Disability in the Millennium Development Goals towards 2010 and beyond”. The UN Secretary General in his annual message for this year encouraged world leaders to build on their work at the MDG September 2010 summit and keep true to their commitment to improve the lives of people with disabilities in the poorest regions of the world.

Every year, each country celebrates December 3^rd in different ways, see here for the list of activities taking place worldwide. The predominant overarching theme of the day focuses on how to ensure disability is included in development efforts. This year, disability and international development organisations in Ireland under the auspices of the Dochas Group on International Development and Disability have organized a roundtable discussion on mainstreaming disability in development policies.
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New Zealand’s Minister for Disability Issues Tariana Turia recently announced a range of measures to promote, protect and monitor the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Person with Disabilities (CRPD) (see here). The measures announced included the establishment of a full-time Disability Rights Commissioner within New Zealand’s Human Rights Commission; a protection and monitoring role for the Office of the Ombudsman and the resourcing of a formalised role for disabled people’s organisations. It is expected that the Human Rights Commission will take responsibility for promoting the rights of people with disabilities, and the Office of the Ombudsman will undertake a protection and monitoring role. Read Full Post »

Human Rights Watch have recently released a report on the ongoing discrimination and sexual and gender-based violence experienced by women with disabilities in Uganda. This report is a helpful contribution to a vastly under researched area and highlights the need for effective policies to protect the human rights of women with disabilities. The report entitled “As if We Weren’t Human: Discrimination and Violence against Women with Disabilities in Northern Uganda” documents the abuse and discrimination that Ugandan women with disabilities are subjected to on a continuous basis. The research was conducted in six districts of Northern Uganda and is based on interviews with 64 women and girls with disabilities. It is estimated that 20% of Ugandans have a disability; there is no disaggregated data on how many women have disabilities.
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In continuing the series of blogs on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in advance of the September UN summit this week’s blog focuses on MDG 3 – Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women.  All of the Millennium Development Goals touch upon essential aspects of women’s lives for example, women specific issues such as maternal health, child mortality and in more general terms vulnerability to HIV/AIDs, poverty and hunger. Empowering women is critical to realising the achievement of the MDGs and this is the premise of MDG 3.

While, this goal is recognised to be vitally important for the overall success of the MDGs, women with disabilities remain invisible within its targets. Disability and gender in the developing world are inextricably linked. Importantly gender is recognised as a risk in acquiring a disability. For example, the risk of women becoming disabled in the developing world is exacerbated by cultural practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM). The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that between 100 and 140 million girls worldwide live with the consequences of FGM.[1] Additional to this, inadequate services in maternal health also increases the risk of women acquiring a disability. The WHO estimates that more than 30 women every minute are seriously injured or disabled during labor, rendering large numbers of women in the developing world physically disabled and socially excluded. Statistics show that for every woman who dies from complications of pregnancy, between 30 and 100 live with painful and debilitating consequences.[2]
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Education has been described as having the power to transform lives. It broadens people choices, empowers them to participate in social and political life and equips them with skills to sustain their livelihoods.  As world leaders gather at the UN at the September summit to discuss progress of the Millennuim Development Goals (MDG’s), the debate on MDG goal two focusing on achieving primary education for all children will be interesting to follow. The specific target of MDG 2 is to ‘ensure that 2015, children everywhere alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling’.[1] In reviewing statistics on education, there would appear to be a consensus that progress has been made with this goal for example 88% of children of official primary school age were enrolled in primary education in 2007, this was an increase from 83% in 2000; enrolment in sub-Saharan Africa has increased by 15% and 95% of primary age children in Latin American and the Caribbean and 94% in South Eastern Asia are in school. [2]However, despite these promising figures, statistics show that 72 million children worldwide were denied the right to education and based on current trends in a world post financial crisis, it is expected that 56 million children could be still out of education in 2015.[3]
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Disability has gained currency as a policy issue in the development discourse over the past decade. Recent legal and policy developments such as the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD) have resulted in an increased recognition that disability is a development issue and that without accessible and inclusive development programmes, overall goals to reduce global poverty will not be achieved. The CRPD aside from having a specific article focusing on development cooperation (Article 32), is also described as having an explicit social dimension as the majority of its articles focus on barrier removal and positive measures.

A recently published report by the World Bank with support from the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs reviews where disability fits within current development policy. The report entitled ‘Disability and International Cooperation and Development: A review of Policies and Practices” examines recent policies of major multilateral and bilateral agencies, which they have employed to include disability in development aid.
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The Forced Migration Review has dedicated the majority of its 35th edition to addressing issues focusing on Disability and Displacement. According to its editorial, using WHO estimates of disability (7-10% of the worlds population is disabled), three to four million disabled people can be found among the worlds 42 million displaced. The special edition includes 27 articles focusing on disability and displacement, including an introduction by Shuaib Chalklen, UN Special Rapporteur for Disability.

Each of the articles illustrate why disabled people who are displaced need particular consideration, and highlight some of the initiatives taken (locally and globally) to change thinking and practices so that their vulnerability is recognised, their voices heard – and responses made inclusive. Some articles of interest include a focus on Vulnerability and Disability in Darfur, which discusses how a range of difficulties faced by persons with disabilities throughout the displacement process contribute to their increased vulnerability. The article cites examples of difficulties with transportation and mobility which resulted in disabled people initial journey of ‘flight’ from their village being on average twice as long as their non disabled villagers putting them at risk of further attack and insecurity. Additional to that, problems with registering and getting access to food and basic supplies increase their vulnerability.
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The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have become the overarching focus for poverty reduction work on the international agenda. The MDG’s first goal is to eradicate poverty and hunger. Within this goal there are specific targets, which include halving the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day; achieving full and productive employment and decent work of all including women and young people and finally halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. While progress towards these targets is being made, stark figures such as World Bank latest estimates show that 1.4 billion people in developing countries were living in extreme poverty in 2005. Poverty remains one of the greatest social injustices and not just because of the deprivation it brings through denial of access to basic rights such as food and clean water, but also the limitations it places on people achieving their potential to provide for themselves and their families.
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With the timeframe for achieving the Millennium Development Goals drawing nearer (2015), the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has invited world leaders to attend a summit in New York on 20 – 22 September 2010. The vision behind this important meeting is to redouble efforts to meet the goals and now more than ever in the face of recent global economic turmoil there is a need to protect those most vulnerable to poverty. Ireland has a key role to play in this summit in its own right and also as part of the EU delegation.

On June 14th, Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin will attend an EU Foreign Affairs meeting, which will determine Europe’s negotiation position for the United Nations. In advance of this, over recent months there has been a lot of NGO activity as to how best Ireland can advance its commitments made both in our development aid policy and our commitments to international treaty and resolutions. Agencies such as Trocaire held a high level roundtable asking what can the EU and Ireland do to speed up the progress towards achieving the goals? Most recently, 45 Irish development NGOs under the umbrella of Dochas wrote to Minister for Foreign Affairs urging that Ireland honours its commitment to international aid and give an undertaking to make all efforts to reach the agreed target of .07% Read Full Post »

(* This article is co-authored with Charles O’Mahony, PhD fellow, Centre for Disability Law and Policy, NUI Galway)

According to an article in the Irish Times today, more than 500 official complaints (approx three a week) over the past two and a half years have been made regarding abuse and mistreatment of disabled people in residential settings.  The most serious incidents included allegations of abuse or physical assault by a staff member at a number of residential centres.

Currently Ireland has no mandatory standards or independent inspections for assessing care provided by residential services to disabled people.  Health Research Board statistics for 2008 show that there are more than 8,000 adults with an intellectual disability in receipt of full-time residential services. The majority of these services are provided through voluntary service providers at an approximate cost of €1.5bn to the Irish government.  Despite this volume of state funding, these services remain uninspected and unregulated.

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