UNITED NATIONS, April 6 (UPI) -- The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has been opened for signing. On the first day it garnered 81 signatories and ratification from Jamaica.
This means only 19 more countries are needed to ratify the treaty expected later this year. Of the 81 to sign, 42 also signed the Optional Protocol to the instrument.
Supporters of the convention and the protocol see the March 29 opening as more of a beginning than an end to their campaigning. They see it as a green light to change the social agenda for the world's 650 million disabled.
The long-sought convention stipulates the disabled have standing as fully fledged citizens with the same rights and opportunities as everybody else. It does not grant new or additional rights.
Negotiations on the treaty concluded in August 2006, and the U.N. General Assembly adopted it in December.
"We would not be here today without the sustained efforts of the disability community. This landmark moment is a direct outcome of their vigorous advocacy to right a historic wrong. The United Nations family and our member states responded to the challenge.
"On its adoption by the General Assembly late last year, it became the first human rights treaty of the 21st century, and the fastest negotiated international human rights instrument in history," U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said at the opening ceremony.
"The convention specifically prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities in all areas of life, including employment, access to justice and the right to education, health services and access to transportation," she said. "It requires that public spaces and buildings be accessible to persons with disabilities, and it seeks improvements in information and communications infrastructure, as well.
"The convention also recognizes that a change of attitude is vital if disabled people are to achieve equality. States parties will not only have to combat negative stereotypes and prejudices; they will also be expected to promote awareness of people's abilities and contributions to society.
"The treaty breaks ground in other ways as well, including through its stress on social development. It recognizes that the input, ideas and efforts of the disability community are critical to society's overall progress. It emphasizes that their contributions can supply a crucial boost to the development agenda, while simultaneously accommodating the needs of this important constituency as well."
High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour told reporters after the ceremony in the General Assembly Hall her Geneva-based office is "delighted to support and we hope to service the commitment to be created when the ratifications come into play" and the convention comes into force.
"Where we are today is already a testimony to the empowerment of a community that has a long history of disempowerment. It's the drive and the commitment of the disabilities community itself, I think, that was the greatest impetus towards the content of the treaty and the fact that it has such a now broad-based recognition.
"So, this is the first step I think in empowering a community that will now have a set of national, regional and international instruments for the advancement of their right to the great benefit of all of us," Arbour added.
Ecuador's Vice President Lenin Moreno, who uses a wheelchair, told the General Assembly during the ceremony of how, following the lead of Mexico to work for the convention and the associated protocol, his country chaired the committee that drafted the convention and protocol until it handed the role over to New Zealand.
"The process of recognition and full validity of the human rights of the persons with disabilities does not conclude in this subscription ceremony," he said. "It's just begun. Therefore, I urge (U.N.) member states to commit their major efforts in the road towards an integral application of the convention and its protocol in their own internal legislations."
Another man in a wheelchair, U.N. disability expert Thomas Schindlmayr, pointed out to reporters an immediate benefit for him of the convention: a ramp leading up to the speaking platform in the briefing room.
Schindlmayr recalled that the last time he briefed reporters he had been forced to sit on the side, unable to access the main speaking podium like everybody else.
"This is what the convention is all about," he said. "It is not asking for persons with disabilities to have any new rights; it is asking that persons with disabilities enjoy the same opportunities in society that everybody else already enjoys."
