PRESS CONFERENCE BY CHAIRMAN OF AD HOC COMMITTEE ON RIGHTS

AND DIGNITY OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

The world needed to change its current attitudes as well as the environment and economic realities experienced by persons with disabilities, Luis Gallegos Chiriboga (Ecuador) said at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon.  Mr. Gallegos is Chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on a Comprehensive and Integral International Convention on Protection and Promotion of the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities.

Briefing correspondents on the work of that Committee, which concluded its work today, he said the search for an integrated society, with a sense of community based on the principle of universal human rights was a fundamental aspiration of humankind.  With more than 600 million people with disabilities at birth or during their lives representing 10 per cent of the global population, the world would have to face up to the challenge of this demographic reality.

“The experts consider that 30 to 40 per cent of the households of the world have members with disabilities.  As the planet ages, the number of people with disabilities increases”, he said.  The advancement of the rights of persons with disabilities required effective means and tools to address the inequality and discrimination against them.  For that to happen, societies needed to change, he added.

Mr. Gallegos said that integrating disability concerns into a holistic international convention on the rights of persons with disabilities would call for a new approach that would include not only traditional human rights concerns, but also new realms of concerns in human rights and development in a rapidly changing world.  Those concerns, ranging from technological and genetics to war and conflict, epidemics and poverty in a globalized world, were generating new and emerging issues on the global agenda.

Asked by a correspondent what comparisons there were between disabled persons in developed and developing countries, Mr. Gallegos said disabilities were similar or equal in all countries, the difference being largely one of resources.  There was also a cultural element as well as an educational issue of how to deal with people with disabilities.

“What we’re looking for is to integrate disabilities into a worldwide covenant that would protect those rights, but that would also give them the opportunities, with new technologies, of integrating into society”, he said.

* *** *