December 13, 2006

By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The General Assembly on Wednesday approved the first U.N. convention to protect the rights of the world's 650 million disabled people, prohibiting their exclusion from education, jobs and politics.

The convention requires countries to protect disabled people from exploitation and abuse and to guarantee their rights - such as ensuring the blind can vote and having wheelchair-accessible buildings.

The 192-nation General Assembly adopted the convention by consensus, the culmination of campaign led by rights activists for the disabled. It was the first new human rights treaty to be adopted in the 21st century.

The convention "promises to be the dawn of a new era - an era in which disabled people will no longer have to endure the discriminatory practices and attitudes that have been permitted to prevail for all too long," said U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown.

U.N. member states can start signing the convention on March 30, and it will enter into force when it is ratified by 20 countries. Speakers urged speedy approval.

"It would be a travesty if ... people with disabilities again find themselves at the back of the queue for government attention," said New Zealand's U.N. Ambassador Don MacKay, who chaired the committee that drafted the convention.

Although disabled people are included in existing human rights conventions, their marginalization clearly indicates the need for one their own, MacKay said.

"Attitudes need to change. Societies need to be more inclusive and accessible and persons with disabilities need to be more empowered," he said, praising the 400 activists who "very effectively cajoled governments" into approving the new convention.

About 10 percent of the world's population, or 650 million people, have disabilities, according to U.N. figures. That makes them the world's largest minority, and 80 percent live in developing countries, many in poverty.

The convention advocates keeping the disabled in their communities rather than removing them and educating them separately, as many countries do.

It guarantees their inherent right to life, legal protection, property ownership, control of their financial affairs and privacy.

"As persons with disabilities, we deserve to have our rights recognized on an equal basis with all other citizens - and never less than this," said Pamela Molina Toleda of Chile, representing the International Disability Caucus, which comprises more than 70 organizations that participated in drafting the convention and lobbying for it.

Tina Minkowitz of the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry said any laws restricting the human rights of disabled people "need to be abolished from today onwards all over the world." She cited the forced sterilization of disabled girls and women.

"Sign language and other alternative methods of communications must be recognized in all situations of information, education and employment," she added.

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