Briefing “I Protect the Rights”
On November 9, 2012 the Coalition for Independent Living and the Movement for Accessible Environment, together with their friends and supporters, arranged the Briefing “I Protect the Rights”.
The aim of the Briefing was to protect the rights and interests of DWPs as well as define the roles of civil and public sectors in the process and make them more active.
There was the following announcement made at the Briefing:
“As the organizations motivated to protect the rights of PWDs, we call for the Government and the society to change their attitudes towards PWDs and DPOs as ones of charity organizations, which is unacceptable to us. We are trying to protect our rights and interests, which are well declared in the UN Convention on Disabled Persons (2006).
We also want to inform the society that DPOs and other human rights organizations, as well as some active members of the society have several times referred to the President of Georgia with the request to ratify the UN Convention on Disabled Persons (2006) and move to the implementation of the Action Plan. We are trying to make the Government ratify the Convention from the very day of adopting it. We have studied each aspect very carefully and think that the arguments provided from the decision-makers against ratifying the Convention, as if “it will cost a lot to the Government” or “the Government lacks the resources to implement the obligations taken under the Convention”, are not true. We do not have the illusion that ratifying the Convention will be a panacea, but it will at least enable each PWD to better protect his/her own and others’ rights.
We request that the President of Georgia has introduced the Convention to the Parliament for ratification in the nearest future, in particular, when the Head of the Human Rights Committee of the Parliament has clearly announced that the majority was ready to work on and ratify the mentioned Convention. It is obvious, that despite the readiness of the Parliament, no document could be ratified until being introduced by the President.
It is desirable that the Parliament has revised the Convention before upcoming International Day of Disabled Persons (December 3). Otherwise, we keep the rights to refer to other forms of the civil protest in order to ensure that the protection of the rights and interests of PWDs become an uninterrupted process.