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AD HOC COMMITTEE ON
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Documents and contributions |
Online discussion |
NGO Participation |
Working Group : Compilation of Elements
Rights into Action - |
Disabled children and young people face a double burden of discrimination. They are excluded and marginalised as a result of their impairment, and are further denied a right to participation in decisions affecting them because of their youth. Disabled people have fought hard for the right to represent themselves and to challenge the assumption that non-disabled people can speak on their behalf. Similarly, disabled children and young people demand the right to be heard and to challenge the assumption that adults can adequately represent their experience and concerns1.
Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child introduces for the first time in international law, the right of all children capable of expressing their own views to 'express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child'. The Committee on the Rights of the Child has stated that this article is one of the fundamental values of the Convention2. It imposes clear obligations on governments to ensure that children and young people have the right to have a say in all actions and decisions affecting them, from the family to the wider community level, and to have appropriate information with which to inform those views. This right to be listened to and taken seriously recognises that children and young people must be involved in the exercise of their rights and not simply treated as passive recipients of adult protection. However, to date, too little action has been taken by governments around the world to ensure that the right to be heard extends to disabled children3.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child includes disability as a ground for protection against discrimination, and also includes an article addressing the rights of disabled children4. Nevertheless, it is extremely rare for governments when reporting to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, to provide information on the realisation of the rights of disabled children beyond provision of health care and access to education5. In other words, although all the Convention rights, in principle, extend to the rights of all children, disabled children are frequently forgotten or ignored, in the same way that the rights of disabled people are disregarded by governments when reporting on the international covenants.
While many of the experiences of disabled adults and children and young people are similar, they are not the same. It is not appropriate that the concerns and interests of children and young people are simply subsumed under those of adults. In order to ensure that the rights of disabled children and young people are not sidelined in the new Convention, it is imperative that their different perspectives are properly reflected and made explicit in its text. Only by so doing, will the rights of disabled children and young people be adequately represented.
In order to ensure the visibility of disabled children and young people in the disability Convention, Rights into Action would like to draw attention to the following proposals for consideration in the drafting process:
Disabled children and young people are subjects of rights. Too often, those rights are violated and disregarded. The proposed Convention offers a unique opportunity to assert and codify those rights, and place explicit obligations on governments to take action to make them a reality. Rights into Action offers another unique opportunity - a means through which the drafters of the Convention can hear the voices of disabled children and young people, and ensure that their experience and concerns are used to inform the text in the interests of disabled children and young people all over the world.
Notes:
1. Manifesto of Rights into Action, 4th July 2003
2. Pais MS, (1997), The Convention on the Rights of
the Child, in Manual of Human Rights Reporting, OHCHR, Geneva
3. Lansdown G, (2001) Its Our World Too! A report on
the Lives of Disabled Children for the UN General Assembly Special
Session on Children, Disability Awareness in Action, London
4. Article 2 addresses the right to non-discrimination;
Article 23 addresses the rights of disabled children
5. Between 2000-2003, Rights for Disabled Children, an international
working group of disabled people's organisations, undertook analysis
of each government report due to be examined by the Committee on the
Rights of the Child. It was found that although governments did seek
to address the issue of children's participation, albeit inconsistently,
they rarely, if ever, mentioned participation with regard to disabled
children.
6. See Article 12, Convention on the Rights of the
Child
7. See Article 5, Convention on the Rights of the Child
8. See Articles 5, 6, 23 and 29, Convention on the
Rights of the Child
9. See Article 5, Convention on the Rights of the Child
10. See Article 19, Convention on the Rights of the
Child
11. See, for example, A Matter of Context; the sexual
abuse of children with disabilities, (1997) Radda Barnen,; Report
on the maltreatment of children with disabilities, (1992) Crosse,
Kaye and Ratnovski, National Centre for on Child Abuse and neglect,
Administration for Children and Families, US Department of Health
and Human Services, Washington,
12. Article 42, Convention on the Rights of the Child
13. See Article 12, Convention on the Rights of the
Child