DPI/NGO CONFERENCE HOLDS PANEL DISCUSSION ON ‘OVERCOMING DISCRIMINATION

TO REALIZE HUMAN RIGHTS AND DIGNITY FOR ALL’

 

(Received from a UN Information Officer.)

This morning, the sixty-first Department of Public Information (DPI)/Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Conference convened for three days at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) headquarters in Paris to discuss human rights implementation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, holding a panel discussion on the theme “Overcoming Discrimination to Realize Human Rights and Dignity for All”.  Moderated by Gillian Sorensen, Senior Adviser at the United Nations Foundation, the Panel, which took questions from members of civil society, included four other members of the international organizations and NGOs.

Opening the round table, Ms. Sorensen said she had been inspired by the discussions yesterday, which had emphasized the critical role of civil society in human rights, talking about individual and collective responsibilities and the need to be alert to human rights violations; the need to testify, to galvanize and to hold politicians to account; to use their expertise to find engagement and solidarity; to make use of the law, and sometimes to name and shame; but, above all, to speak up for the vulnerable and the marginalized and to see them as holders of all human rights.

On the issue of poverty, Eugen Brand, Director-General of the International Movement ATD Fourth World, said the concerns of the poorest of the poor were an urgent and compelling question that all had to address.  When they had heard that the Secretary-General of the United Nations had said that 2008 should be the year of the poorest of the poor, that had been a real inspiration.  It was also encouraging to hear that the Millennium Review Summit in 2010 would include participation by members of the poorest of the poor.  Ban Ki-moon had also emphasized the need to consolidate new strategies based on human dignity, human rights and the recognition of the world's poorest.  Each country, each society in the international community, had to work together to look at poverty today and to work together to understand its root causes and consequences, including the exclusion and marginalization that they faced.  During the recent unrest sparked by the global food crisis, a number of important pronouncements had been made, but had they really heard the voice of those directly affected?  They had to find a way to recognize the other, to free themselves from the fear of the other, and to work together to create spaces of confidence –- at the national and international level -– where the world's poorest would feel that they had dignity and were deemed worthy of dialogue. 

Speaking about disabled people and their rights, Dan Pescod, European and International Campaigns Manager at the Royal National Institute of Blind People, said that the disabled were perhaps the most marginalized and excluded of all groups that should benefit from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  There were 30 million disabled in the European Union, and 650 million disabled worldwide -– in other words, 1 person in 10 of the world's population had a disability.  While the ageing population in the European Union meant that the disabled population was growing there, 80 per cent of the disabled came from developing countries, most coming from the poorest of the poor.  And yet, while disabled peoples' rights were fundamentally important, they were all too often fundamentally overlooked.  Exclusion from education, institutionalization, forced sterilization and lack of access to books, those were all among the types of exclusion the disabled faced.  There was a huge disenfranchisement of disabled people, despite 60 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  There had been some movement in the 1990s, but the real breakthrough had come with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Disabled Persons, which had come into force in May.  Unlike most conventions, that Convention had been negotiated with the direct and engaged involvement of non-governmental organizations, which had led to a very meaningful, impactive, thorough document that set out the rights of the disabled.  Now it was up to them as NGOs to have a real voice to examine, monitor and lobby on that Convention to ensure that it became a reality, and so that all States signed that Convention.  Some 35 had done so already. 

Addressing the situation in Mayotte, Comoros, Madina Querre, a former consultant to the NGO Save the Children, said she had worked a great deal in Africa on the issue of women's and children's rights.  She had been on mission in Mayotte last year, where the biggest problems facing citizens had been a lack of social services on the ground.  At independence, Mayotte, one of four islands of the Comorian Archipelago, had asked that it be attached to French territory.  When, in 2004, the French social security system had been imposed, that meant that health care was no longer free and available for all; as to obtain access to care, the inhabitants had to have identity papers.  Suddenly, half the population was considered to be in an irregular situation as far as health care was concerned.  Other problems facing Mayotte included a lot of sexual abuse, abduction of young women, though no one would acknowledge it.

Focusing on the plight of the mentally ill, René Stockman, representative of the Catholic Order of the Brothers of Charity, said that many people suffered from mental illness today, with 14 per cent of all illnesses linked to mental disorders.  Many of them were marginalized, discriminated against, were no longer treated as human beings and suffered a social stigma.  The Brothers of Charity worked to change that mentality and to restore human dignity to the mentally ill.  But today, they were confronted in many places with severe discrimination, not only in Africa and Asia, but also in the United States and the European Union.  In Africa and Asia, such people were seen as “possessed” and they were taken to local faith healers and isolated in their villages.  Mental patients were often institutionalized, where some were kept in chains, or could even be killed.  Moreover, many were living in large institutions, where they were deprived of their human dignity, as in Romania.  Chronic psychiatric patients were among the most abandoned.  In Italy and the United States, many of the big institutions had been closed, but no alternative facilities had been provided, leaving the chronically ill to wander and take shelter as they could.  To address that situation, first, the mentally ill had to be considered as human beings.  Effective training must be provided for mental health workers, awareness raised about the plight of the mentally ill, and proper legal frameworks adopted for treating the mentally ill.

In the ensuing discussion, a participant raised the issue of the traditional practice in Haiti of giving children to the care of a third party, to be exploited, when the parents did not have the means to take care of them, saying some 300,000 children were living in that situation in Haiti alone.  They had no rights, no school, nothing, with very few exceptions.  Another participant felt that legal norms were not enough to address discrimination against the disabled.  NGOs had to lobby Governments to change policies and to raise awareness about disabilities themselves.  Another participant wished to draw attention in particular to the difficulties the disabled faced in receiving an education, and the fact that many disabled children received no education at all.

The DPI/NGO Conference will reconvene at 3 p.m., when it will hold a panel discussion on the topic “Human Rights and Human Security”, which will be moderated by Joanna Weschler, Director of Research of the Security Council Report.

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For information media • not an official record