1
FOURTH SESSION OF THE CONFERENCE OF STATES PARTIES TO
THE CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES
New York, 7-9 September 2011
Statement on ECLAC efforts and progress to support States Parties’
implementation of the Convention
I am honored to present the greetings of Ms. Alicia Bárcena, Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, together with those of the Director of ECLAC’s Social Development Division, Mr. Martín Hopenhayn, to the heads of national delegations and authorities present at this fourth session of the Conference of the State Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Ms. Bárcena is pleased to inform the State Parties that ECLAC has recently endorsed the Strategy and Plan of Action of the Interagency Support Group on the Implementation of the Convention as an important tool to respond to our mandate to contribute to strengthening democracy and give support to our Member States in moving towards greater equality.
The position document of ECLAC last session, Time for Equality: Closing gaps, opening trails states that “the deepening of democracy as a collective order and as a shared global imaginary calls for greater equality of opportunities and rights. This means extending public participation and decision-making to broad sectors of society that have been marginalized for centuries while also enhancing the effective ownership of economic, social and cultural rights”. Equality of rights means that citizenship fully endows people with the right to access reasonable levels of social welfare and recognition. “Deepening democracy also means moving towards greater equality in access, especially in fields such as education, health, employment, housing, basic services, environmental quality and social security”[1].
At the thirty first session of ECLAC in 2006, a number of delegations called for “the mainstreaming of the issue of disability, with a cross-cutting approach”, in the activities of the Commission[2]. The secretariat welcomed the proposal and suggested that activities should first be conducted in the statistical field, to collect and impulse the production of official data on the situation of the 90 millions of persons who live with some kind of disability in our region and represent about 14% of the total population of the world in the same situation[3].
First efforts carried out by CELADE-Population Division and the Subregional Headquarters for the Caribbean led to the publication of three studies on the availability, collection and use of data on persons with disabilities in the region[4], which were followed by a study of the national legislation and programmes put in place in Latin American countries and a situational analysis of the implementation of the Convention in the Caribbean subregion[5]. This latter study was prepared on the basis of a set of four surveys to NGOs, government ministries and national statistical offices carried out in 2010 on the implementation of the Convention in the English and Dutch Caribbean.
While showing some improvements in the areas of legislation, education and employment, the results inferred that persons with disabilities had more work opportunities in the private than the public sector in addition to reveal a clear gender gap: there are more women with disability and more of them are unemployed, disabled men being twice as likely to be employed compared to women. Serious progress is also needed in the areas of sexual and reproductive health, accessibility and personal mobility as well as access to information and communication. These surveys will now be replicated in the Latin American countries and their results be consolidated with the Caribbean information in a comparative study that will be included in the Social Panorama annually published by ECLAC Social Development Division.
The results of the Caribbean surveys were presented at a subregional meeting and a training workshop on the implementation of the Convention last November in Trinidad and Tobago[6], where discussion were centered on developing and strengthening regular mechanisms of inclusion of persons with disabilities in decision-making, planning, implementation and evaluation at all levels, making use of information and data collection, advocacy, resource mobilization and networking. Participants especially underlined the urgent need to address the lack of coordination among the various stakeholders, including government, NGOs of persons with disabilities, civil society in general and service providers.
In order to attain a comprehensive understanding of the situation of persons with disabilities, more information is also needed – including epidemiologic data and research. The studies carried out by ECLAC reveal that most countries collect statistical data on persons with disabilities through the census rounds, while some countries of Latin America also include a question on disability in their household or demographic and health surveys and 7 of them have carried out a specialized survey on the issue. Nevertheless, this limited information is not comparable between countries and still presents difficulties for generating a reliable prevalence rate, especially in the Caribbean. Special efforts are carried out to confront this challenge through collaboration with national statistical offices in the development and dissemination of a guidance note on data collection through censuses, in line with the recommendations of the Washington Group.
Being a recent instrument, accession to the Convention has fared well in the region, being signed and/or ratified by 29 countries out of 33, of which 22 have signed and 19 ratified its Optional Protocol[7]. To strengthen its implementation, ECLAC’s contribution is oriented toward awareness raising, research and access to knowledge. In addition to the surveys – which are also an important tool to disseminate and raise awareness on the binding agreements of the Convention-, technical assistance to harmonize data collection through censuses will be pursued and a study on the progress made on the entitlement of social rights of people with disability will be prepared. The results will be shared at an expert meeting that will evaluate the effective entitlement of their economic, social and cultural rights, among other population groups. Follow-up activities will be planned on the basis of the conclusions of the meeting.
[1]ECLAC (2010), Time for equality: closing gaps, opening trails (LC/G.2432(SES.33/3)), Santiago, Chile [online]
[2] ECLAC (2006), Report of the Thirty-First session of the Commission, Montevideo, Uruguay, 20-24 March 2006 (LC/G.2318) [online]
[3] See WHO/WORLD BANK (2011), World Report on Disability, Geneva, Table 2.2, p. 30 [online]
[4] See ECLAC (2009), A further study on disability in the Caribbean: rights, commitment, statistical analysis, and monitoring, LC/CAR/L.237 [online] Susana Scholnik (2010), "América Latina: La medición de la discapacidad a partir de los censos y fuentes alternativas" en "Los Censos de 2010 y la salud. Informe del Seminario-Taller", Serie Seminarios y Conferencias, No 59, CEPAL [online] and Taeke Gjaltema y Sinovia Moonie (2011), Availability, collection and use of data on disability in the Caribbean subregion, Series Studies and Perspectives, No 11, ECLAC [online]
[5] See Fernanda Stang (2011), Las personas con discapacidad en América Latina: del reconocimiento jurídico a la desigualdad real, Serie Población y Desarrollo No 103, CEPAL [online] and Louise Ebbeson, Taeke Gjaltema and Candice Gonzales,(2011), A situational analysis of the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in the Caribbean Subregion, LC/CAR/L.280/Rev.1 (to be published in the Series Studies and Perspectives) [online]
[6] See ECLAC (2011a), Report of the subregional meeting on the implementation of the CRPD, Port of Spain, 9-10 November 2010, LC/CAR/L.278 [online] and ECLAC (2011b), Report of the subregional workshop on the implementation of the CRPD, Port of Spain, 11-12 November 2010 (LC/CAR/L.279 [online]
[7] See