Last week I attended the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations (AFDO) conference, Policy About Us For Us. Since Australia has also ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) I thought it might be useful to share some of the themes and threads.
Attention was given to monitoring, (the convention), liberation, (freedom), and capacity building in three streams. The latter simply means increasing the knowledge, skill and the use of tools by disabled people to achieve our rights.
One of the Keynotes was Tina Minkowitz. Tina was involved in the development of the CRPD from a mental health perspective. Her presentation centred on opposition to forced treatment and on supported decision making. She is a passionate advocate on both counts, and argues for law making which supports both concepts. Her arguments are compelling, but I think require a better mental health system than we have now, at least when it comes to forced treatment. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be working hard to reduce forced treatment.
Supported decisionmaking also applies to people with intellectual disabilities. It seems to me to be a very sensible idea.
Other important themes which emerged were the necessity for ratification of the Optional Protocol to the CRPD and the importance of the first non disabled organisations’ (NGO) shadow report to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which comments on the progress of human rights from disabled people’s perspective.
Some of the points I made in my presentation related to the formation of strong collaborative coalitions. I talked about the importance of moving away from silos and ghettos separating impairment groups, and separating non-disabled and disabled people. I also stressed the necessity to use the language of rights in everyday education. So, for “special education” simply say “education” or “education of disabled children.” For “special needs” say “needs” or “disability needs.” There is also no such thing as “special children” Our children are all special and unique.
The proceedings from the conference will eventually be published on the AFDO site.
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