[lbo-talk] Re: Fwd: UN disability rights

Chuck Grimes cgrimes at rawbw.com
Sun Aug 10 14:52:42 PDT 2003


``Citizenship can be seen as the realization of certain rights. When states can be held responsible for the treatment of their citizens, much can be gained. The United Nations has a role in setting global standards but so do disabled persons ourselves...'' Marta Russell

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I would strengthen the right to `assistive technology' and broaden it on a conceptual basis in the following way.

The right to physical means of self-determination, including the right to physical mobility for those people with physical disabilities. The right to full communication with and access to the educational, social, cultural, political and economic institutions of the society through whatever means chosen by people so excluded, including sign, braille, and other adaptive methods and techniques.

I would also add the concept that people with disabilities have the right to determine the legal and institutional expression of these rights.

Even though the slogan says `nothing about us without us', the rights listed do not explicitly capture this fundamental right of self-determination. There is the right to be free of `bodily and psychic integrity, including autonomy in decision-making.' But this statement has a passive implication. In other words, it says one has a right to be free of the imposition of decisions made by others. But I think you want a more pro-active statement here.

There are two concepts that don't quite match each other. The first is the right to be free of barriers, exclusion, and abuse. This is a passive right, namely, stop killing us, stop discrimination. The other right is pro-active, the right to positively determine a place in society as a social being and as a political entity, as an active member at the table of all the institutions that effectively run the society.

There are other rights that need to be strengthen, I think. First is the right to be positively secured in the physical person by the provision of adequate food, clothing, shelter, and mobility and the right to self-selected and appropriate medical care. These should already be universal human rights, but they need to be re-stated for people with disabilities.

It needs to be emphasized that it is the absolute duty of the nation-state to provide these physical and positive securities of the person, and to have these administered by institutions and agencies that are managed at least in part by disabled people themselves, and answerable to them.

In general I think you want to broaden the conceptual basis and give it a very high sounding elegance. The point is to make the document itself an empowering act of the political and social imagination and not just a set of legal conventions.

Chuck Grimes



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