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Appeal to government to sign The Convention On The Rights of Persons With Disabilities
National Association of Societies for the Care of the Handicapped (NASCOH)
April 09, 2011

National Association of Societies for the Care of the Handicapped (NASCOH) would like to commend the Government of Zimbabwe for having expressed its commitment to the spirit and letter of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and for having signalled its intention to the Republic of Zimbabwe's Permanent Representative to the UN to sign the convention.

However, it is almost two years now since the government signaled its intention and while we fully understand the complexities involved in trying to align domestic policies and legislation with the convention before signing the convention, it is our hope that the government will move with speed to ensure that domestic legislation is in accord with the convention, and thus pave the way for the signing and ratification of this convention which is of monumental importance to people with disabilities (PWDs) in Zimbabwe and the world over.

So far, some 147 countries have signed the convention while 97 are parties. Closer to home, countries like South Africa, Namibia, and Uganda were some of the first to both sign and ratify the convention, thus binding themselves to the overarching objective of the convention, which is to ensure that people with disabilities are treated as equals in all walks of life.

No other international instrument offers greater scope for inclusion of people with disabilities and equalization of opportunities than the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with disabilities, which was passed by the United Nations in 2006 and came into force in March 2008. The entry into force of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol in May 2008 marked the beginning of a new era in the efforts "to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity" as laid out in article 1 of the convention. The strength of the convention lies in the following:

• The convention espouses a rights based approach to disability, which recognises that the social exclusion and the unique challenges faced by PWDs were not the natural and unavoidable consequence of their physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairment, but the result of the failure of societies to be inclusive and to accommodate individual differences. Critically, in contradistinction to the discredited welfare approach to disability, it views the inclusion of PWDs in society as an obligation and not an option; promotion of autonomy of PWDs a right as opposed to external control; ensuring of empowerment a prerogative in contrast to the disempowering effect of the welfare approach; fixing the environment a key factor as opposed to fixing the disability; facilitating activity for PWDs a key requirement as opposed to limiting activity; dignifying the PWD in contrast to belittling; promoting independence and not dependence and fostering inclusion and integration instead of institutionalisation and segregation.
• The social, legal, economic, political and environmental conditions that act as barriers to the full exercise of rights by persons with disabilities need to be identified and overcome.
• The convention seeks ways to respect, support and celebrate human diversity by creating the conditions that allow meaningful participation by a wide range of persons, including persons with disabilities. Protecting and promoting their rights is not only about providing disability-related services. It is about adopting measures to change attitudes and behaviours that stigmatize and marginalize. Societies need to change, not the individual, and the Convention provides a road map for such change.
• The convention provides for the putting in place the policies, laws and programmes that remove barriers and guarantee the exercise of civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights by persons with disabilities. To achieve a genuine exercise of rights, the policies, laws and programmes that limit rights need to be replaced.
• It provides that programmes, awareness-raising and social support are necessary to change the way society operates and to dismantle the barriers that prevent persons with disabilities from participating fully in society.
• PWDs need to be provided with the opportunities to participate fully in society and with the adequate means to claim their rights.

If signed by the government, the convention offers a range of options for action towards improving the situation of people with disabilities across the spectrum. The government can use the convention as a detailed guideline on how to secure full inclusion of people with disabilities at all levels; development practitioners can gain knowledge on how to incorporate people with disabilities in their programmes; organisations of and for people with disabilities can use the convention to advocate, network and collaborate with the government, civil society, the business community, and wider society to work towards the acknowledgement of the rights of people with disabilities; and people with disabilities and their families can use the convention to learn about their rights and demand that these rights be respected.

The convention on the rights of persons with disabilities is, ultimately, not a convention meant for people with disabilities only: it is a convention for the whole of humanity. Its observance will ensure that there is dignity and justice for all of us.

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