Liz Lynne outlines UN Convention on Disabled People's Rights in European Parliament
September 2, 2003 12:00 AM
Liberal Democrat Euro-MP Liz Lynne will today (Tuesday) be calling on the European Parliament to support proposals regarding the establishment of a UN Convention on Disabled People's Rights.
Liz's report, "Towards a United Nations legally binding instrument to promote and protect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities," will be debated in Parliament from 9pm. The UN's Ad Hoc Committee on the rights and dignity of disabled people agreed in June that a draft Convention on the rights of disabled people should be drafted. Liz's report is therefore a substantial contribution to the debate on what the eventual Convention will look like.
Commenting in advance of the debate, Liz said:
"Now that work is progressing in actually writing the Convention, this report effectively amounts to the European Union's contribution to that drafting process. The Convention should emphatically adopt a rights-based approach, tailoring human rights already included in various treaties to the needs of disabled people. We must move away from the medical model of disability.
"International human rights treaties are worthless if they are not enforceable. That is why I am calling for it to be a legally binding instrument, backed up by a UN Monitoring Committee to review how it is being implemented worldwide.
"Finally, if the EU is to have any credibility in this debate, it must lead by example. For this reason I am calling for an EU-wide Directive on disabled people's rights to be adopted as a matter of priority."
The full text of Liz's report can be found on the European Parliament website.
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