Using Conventions for disability-inclusive action in the Pacific

Graeme Innes

Australian Disability and Development Consortium International Conference

Darwin, 15 September 2010

I acknowledge the traditional owners of this land.

“The title of this presentation is "Using Conventions for disability-inclusive action in the Pacific". What do these words mean? Are they important? And does it matter that we all use these words to mean the same thing?

There's a famous discussion about what words mean in Lewis Carrol's writing. Through the Looking Glass, is the book that followed Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Humpty Dumpty uses every day words in sentences in a way that Alice doesn't understand. When she tells him this, he says "Of course you don't -- till I tell you". "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

Words like "using Conventions for disability inclusive action" can mean different things to different people - by people with disability, by disabled people's organisations, by governments, by funding organisations, and by the development sector. And this lack of common understanding can lead to confusion and frustration for people with disability, valuable resources being wasted, opportunities for rapid and effective progress being missed, and the rights of people with disability continuing to be violated, abused and neglected.

But where there is common understanding of meaning, disability inclusive action, that is guided by Conventions, is beginning to deliver real and effective change. This is because these actions are being framed from the perspective of people with disability having and claiming rights, and people with disability having a real say in what actions need to be taken.

Our session topic refers to Conventions, plural. I'll talk mainly about one, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, or the DisCo. But it's important to remember that the rights under the others also apply to people with disability:

• the human rights Covenants on civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights
• the Conventions on the elimination of racial discrimination and discrimination against women
• the Convention on the rights of the child
• and the Convention against torture and cruel inhuman or degrading treatment.

So, when we already had this other music, why did we need the DisCo? You may well ask. And why is it so important?

First, because the DisCo puts the spotlight on disability in a way that earlier Conventions failed to do. Legally, people with disability should always have been covered by rights which applied to "all individuals", and prohibitions against "any discrimination". But failing to mention disability at all is obviously not a great start towards realising human rights for us in practice, or doing anything useful and effective towards making it happen. And among the major Conventions, only the DisCo and the Convention on the Rights of the Child actually mention disability.

In the real world, as soon as we remember to look, we see that “"all individuals" includes at least 10 per cent of people with disability. We see that "any discrimination" includes daily discrimination on the basis of disability: in lack of physical and information access, in social systems, attitudes, and expectations of what people can and can't do. And we see that people with disability experience social exclusion, and are heavily represented among the most disadvantaged.

When we look more closely, we see that this link between disability and disadvantage applies in any other area of disadvantage we look at. Women with disability - for example - experience extra dimensions of disadvantage, exclusion and abuse of human rights compared to other women, and compared to other people with disability.

Here are some comments from Marian, one of the participants in the disability rights workshops we've been conducting, together with the Pacific Disability Forum and other regional partners:

It's also plain that there are multiple issues of disadvantage and exclusion for children with disability, and for people with disability among indigenous people, or people in rural and remote areas. And the same is true about people with disability in societies which have acute development needs, and higher levels of poverty.

The failure of earlier conventions to recognise these realities has contributed to human rights not being more central to the efforts of governments, of development agencies, and funding bodies in the past.

Too much human rights discussion occurs as if human rights is all about individual legal rights, and not about social change. The Disability Convention is a welcome and overdue antidote to that sort of thinking.

This brings me to my second set of reasons why the DisCo is important. More clearly than any previous Convention, the DisCo sets out a series of agendas for social change, and a set of actions to get that change happening. It is more than just a passive requirement to respect human rights, and a general obligation to take all appropriate measures to realise human rights. It is a quite detailed and extensive list of things to do.

In the development of the DisCo, there was a lot of argument about whether we needed a Convention on human rights and equality, or a Convention on disability, development and social change. What we got is both- a human rights and a development convention.

Here in Australia, we are already seeing the impact of those two sets of features. We have a draft National Disability Strategy. It is expressly framed as a strategy for implementation of the Convention, including reporting against a set of indicators for social change.

It's exciting to see that around the region there are similar moves towards national disability strategies. They similarly focus on the rights and obligations set out in the Convention, as the key to development strategies for social change.

This brings me back to the Humpty Dumpty question. What do we mean by disability inclusive action, and disability inclusive strategies?

We could just mean action by governments, and other powerful and hopefully well meaning actors, to promote inclusion for people with disability. But that is not the agenda the DisCo presents.

Critically, the Convention places people with disability, and organisations that represent us, at the core of any action. This is clearly stated in Article 4, and throughout the DisCo.

Here is another voice of experience-

Let's unpack Article 4. Governments, and others involved in making decisions about social development, need to consult with people with disability:  because the Convention says so; and also because, as Elenoa from Fiji - who is here with us - reminds us, people with disability, and their organisations, have knowledge and experience which governments and development agencies don't always have, but which they do need.

It's really important to remember that the DisCo is not just about those areas of government which specifically deal with disability services, or disability policy, or human rights. It's about everything. Transport, building regulation, communications, education, government administration, employment policy, you name it, we DisCo it.

So the need for government, and other actors in development policy, to involve people with disability becomes even more crucial - and the demands on the capacity of disability organisations to engage, and provide the sort of input needed, are large.

Here's a third voice of experience:

It's obvious that Marjorie's statements are not just about the Cook Islands. They are true everywhere. Exclusion of people with disability has meant that we have not been able to share our experiences effectively enough, or indicate to the change-makers what needs to be done.

Exclusion and invisibility of people with disability, has meant that "disability" is new. It's not understood, or is understood narrowly, by governments, service providers, and funding and development organisations, and even human rights organisations.

To keep within my time, I'm going to make some big blunt statements now:

• Because of the history of social exclusion of people with disability, governments in all societies do not have in house the understanding they need of the experience or needs of people with disability;
• Despite the richness of expertise available in the disability community, this same history of our social and economic exclusion has limited us and our organisations. We can not yet provide, on tap, the input that governments need.
• Effective development, and compliance with the DisCo, requires urgent action to empower people with disability, and the strengthening of capacity of our organisations;
• Effective development action, and human rights compliance, needs to take seriously the diversity of people. In particular, we need to take seriously issues for, and participation of, women with disability, children with disability, and people from remote and regional areas;
• And to achieve rights, and to ensure dignity and respect, we must all use the language of rights all the time.

There are some very big challenges in all of this. Each of us, in our own organisations, has much to do to measure up to those challenges. But the DisCo gives us a looking glass, to see what inclusive societies would be like. Our challenge is to change wonderland into reality.