Note to Correspondents

POLAND TO RECEIVE FDR INTERNATIONAL DISABILITY AWARD

 

AT UNITED NATIONS ON 18 SEPTEMBER

 

President Lech Kaczyński To Be Recognized By Secretary-General Kofi Annan

Poland’s President Lech Kaczyński will receive the 2006 Franklin Delano Roosevelt International Disability Award on behalf of his country at a ceremony to be held on Monday, 18 September, at 11 a.m. at the United Nations (Conference Room 4), attended by Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The award, sponsored and organized by the World Committee on Disability and the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, includes a bust of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a $50,000 cash prize, to be given to the Association for the Welfare of the Deaf and Blind, a non-governmental disability organization in Poland.

“ Poland has undergone dramatic changes in recent years,” said the World Committee on Disability in a statement, “making phenomenal progress in disability inclusion.  Their Constitution, drawn in 1997, guarantees the full participation of people with disabilities in all facets of life.”

The ceremony will also feature:  Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs José Antonio Ocampo; Michael R. Deland, Chairman of the World Committee on Disability; Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, Co-Chair of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and granddaughter of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt; Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel, the Institute’s Co-Chair; and Grzegorz Kozlowski of the Association for the Welfare of the Deaf and Blind.

Beginning in 2007, the Award will be granted to a United Nations Member State for achievements in promoting and implementing the spirit and intent of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which was agreed upon by a General Assembly Ad Hoc Committee on 25 August.

For information, please visit www.worldcommitteeondisability.org, or contact Daniel Shepard at the Department of Public Information, tel. 212 963 9495, e-mail shepard@un.org or Mary Dolan at the World Committee on Disability, Tel. 202 955 6313 or mobile 202 368 1083, e-mail dolan@nod.org.

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For information media • not an official record