19 April 2006 :: The
Peninsula
DOHA: Sheikha Hissa Al Thani, UN Special Rappaorteur
on Disability, has said the problems faced by physically
challenged persons should be treated as a larger human
rights issue rather than limiting them to problems faced
by a particular section of the society.
She was delivering the opening address at a three-day
meet of experts converged at Doha Sheraton to develop a
monitoring mechanism on the Convention of the Right of
Persons with Disabilities.
Sheikha Hissa Al Thani, who expressed hope that the
monitoring mechanism would give the Convention the teeth
it needed to ensure the implementation of the Convention,
said the draft document was prepared after collecting
valuable inputs from civil society, disabled person
organisations, human rights institutes, development and
social justice groups and of course directly from the
disabled persons.
"It is not a one-issue Convention. It calls for
re-engineering of the society, altering our way of
living, restructuring ways of thinking, reshaping and
rehabilitating our physical environment, changing
attitudes and transforming the mindsets. It is clear,
targeted, directed and specific in its references", she
said.
Sheikha Hissa Al Thani wanted the experts to consider
the inter-sectorial national mechanism,
inter-disciplinary regional mechanisms and international
mechanism while formulating the monitoring mechanism at
their three day discussion.
Meanwhile, the opening day witnessed a debate on the
issue of the involvement of NGOs and the issue of
developing a regional-based monitoring mechanism.
While a section of experts pointed out that the UN's
recent policy was to discourage the NGO's involvement in
its activities on the question of financial commitments
another section argued that NGOs had played a major role
in the preparation of draft document.
On developing the regional-based monitoring mechanism,
it was pointed out there was no such precedents in the
formulation of UN documents. The meet is expected to come
out with its final conclusions tomorrow.
Source
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