Thomas Hammarberg is the Commissioner of
Human Rights for the Council of Europe, 20.10.08
There are more than 80 million persons with
disabilities in Europe. Their rights are recognised in
international human rights treaties, including the recent
UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
However, these rights are still far from realised. Moving
from rhetoric to concrete implementation has been slow.
Such steps also require a change of attitude - from a
charity approach to rights-based action. For far too
long, policies concerning persons with disabilities have
focused exclusively on institutional care, medical
rehabilitation and welfare benefits. Such policies build
on the premise that persons with disabilities are
victims, rather than subjects able and entitled to be
active citizens. The result has been that men, women and
children with disabilities have had their civil,
cultural, economic, political and social rights violated.
However, a gradual shift in thinking has started as a
result of pressure from the disability movements and
other civil society groups. They have played an important
and active role in the development of the new UN
Convention and the Council of Europe Disability Action
Plan 2006- 2015. These two instruments confirm clearly
that the rights of persons with disabilities are human
rights. States have an obligation to respect, ensure and
fulfill these rights. Participation of persons with
disabilities in all decisions affecting their lives, both
at the individual level and through their organisations,
is recognised as a fundamental principle in both. Words
like "inclusion" and "empowerment" are used in this
context. However, in real life persons with disabilities
still face a number of barriers when seeking to
participate in society. Children with physical
disabilities cannot play with other children in public
playgrounds because of their inaccessible design.
TV programmes without subtitles exclude persons with
hearing impairments. Persons put under plenary
guardianship are prevented from acting in almost all
areas of life. They cannot, for example, vote, buy or
sell things, or decide where to live, work, travel or
marry. Making societies inclusive requires planning and
systematic work. It is therefore encouraging that several
European states have now adopted disability plans and
strategies. Every country will need to develop such plans
tailored to its own circumstances. Those who have tried
to set priorities, define time-limits and allocate budget
resources and responsibility for implementation have
generally been rewarded with positive results. Such plans
must address the situation of children with
disabilities.
Many of these children are still not accepted in
ordinary schools because the schools are not equipped to
meet their needs. The same thing happens at day-care
centres, sometimes forcing parents to choose between
leaving their children in institutional care or giving up
their job in order to care for their child. The situation
of children without parental care is particularly
serious. Life in an institution, separating children from
their family and their social context, almost inevitably
leads to exclusion. More resources are needed for
supporting families, especially families living in
poverty and single-parent households, to enable children
to grow up in their family environment.
Childcare centres and schools should be open to all
children and equipped to meet different needs. Social
services and health care providers in the community must
be accessible and competent to care for persons with
different disabilities. Such refo rms are challenging and
req uire commitment and re-allocation of resources. The
right to ed ucation is equally important to all children.
Even though every child's ability to learn is undisputed,
there are still children in Europe of school age who are
considered to be "uneducable" and denied any form of
education. Such practices do not only limit the child's
options to support him or herself later as an adult, but
also their possibility to become independent and
participate in society. The obvious principle is that
persons with disabilities ha - ve the right to rec - eive
quality edu - cation and no-one should be excluded from
ordinary schools because of their disability. Another
group not to be forgotten in such action plans is aged
people with disabilities. As a consequence of getting
older many of us will develop for instance, reduced
vision, reduced hearing or reduced mobility. Innovative
approaches are required to meet these challenges across a
wide range of service areas.
Co-ordinated action with the aim of enabling aging
people with disabilities to remain in their community to
the greatest extent possible is essential. This requires
an assessment of individual needs and forward planning as
well as ensuring that the required services indeed are
available. Another aspect which must be taken up in the
action plans is the situation of persons with mental
disabilities. The situation in psychiatric institutions
in several European countries is shockingly bad. I have
seen institutions the conditions of which are so inhuman
and degrading that they should be closed down.
Unfortunately, medication is too often used as the only
form of treatment. There is an urgent need to apply
alternatives, such as different forms of therapy,
rehabilitation and other activities. Unclear admission
and discharge procedures constitute another problem
resulting in what in reality is arbitrary detention.
There are, however, also positive examples and trends to
empower patients with mental disabilities by facilitating
their active involvement in treatment plans and providing
complaints procedures for those who feel that their
rights have been violated.
As with all closed settings where the liberty of
person(s) is restricted, effective complaints procedures
as well as independent monitoring visits are of crucial
importance. The Optional Protocol to the UN Convention
against Torture requires states to establish national
inspection systems to monitor all places of detention,
including mental health and social care institutions.
Finally, persons with disabilities can also be victims of
hate crimes and hate motivated incidents. Violence,
harassment and negative stereotyping have a significant
negative impact on disabled people's sense of security
and wellbeing and their ability to participate socially
and economically in their communities. Research conducted
by Mencap in the United Kingdom demonstrated that 90
percent of people with a learning disability had
experienced bullying and harassment.
In addition to general awarenessraising measures,
proactive policing and prompt prosecutions are needed to
tackle hate crime against persons with disabilities .
Full removal of social, legal and physical barriers to
the inclusion of persons with disabilities will take time
and require resources. But it has to be done. We cannot
afford to keep barriers that prevent 80 million people
from fully participating in and contributing to our
societies as voters, politicians, employees, consumers,
parents and taxpayers like everybody else.
Governments should now take action in order to realize
fully the human rights of persons with disabilities:
- Ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons
with Disabilities and the Optional Protocol and start
implementing it. Use the European Action Plan as a
tool to make the standards a reality
- Develop action plans to remove physical, legal,
social and other barriers that prevent persons with
disabilities from participating in society. Consult
with and include persons with disabilities and their
organisations in the planning and monitoring of laws
and policies which affect them
- Adopt non-discrimination legislation covering all
relevant areas of society
- Set up independent Ombudsmen or other equality
bodies to monitor that persons with disabilities can
fully exercise their rights
- Develop programmes to enable persons with
disabilities to live in the community. Cease new
admissions to social care institutions and allocate
sufficient resources to provide adequate health care,
rehabilitation and social services in the community
instead
- Review the laws and procedures for involuntary
hospitalisation to secure that both law and practice
comply with international human rights standards
- Set up independent mechanisms equipped to make
regular, unannounced and effective visits to social
care homes and psychiatric hospitals in accordance
with the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention
against Torture
- Tackle hate crime against persons with
disabilities through proactive policing and prompt
prosecutions
Source: http://www.neurope.eu/
