PARLIAMENT AS AN INSTRUMENT FOR CHANGE ON DISABILITY

King Sobhuza Memorial Park
Swaziland, OCtober 25, 2005

Your Excellencies, Honorable Ministers, Members of Parliament, Distinguished Participants to this workshop, Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen, Good Morning.

First of all, we at the U.S. Embassy are very pleased to have provided funding for this workshop.  We are furthermore appreciative of any initiative in support of the ongoing efforts to promote and protect the rights of disabled persons.  We have no doubts that partnerships of various national governments, non-governmental organizations and national institutions such as this Parliament, and organizations representing disabled persons, are essential in working to achieve awareness, full rights and equal treatment under law for the disabled in our societies.  Human dignity is the anchor norm of human rights.  Each individual has inestimable value.  People, including those with disabilities, must not be valued based solely on their economic usefulness to their communities and societies but on their inherent self-worth and other merits.

Human equality, a related value, is central to the system of basic human freedoms postulated by human rights law.  Its core premise is that all persons not only posses inestimable inherent self-worth but are also inherently equal in terms of self-worth, regardless of their differences.  Thus, distinctions stemming from factors that are arbitrary from a moral point of view such as race, gender, age or disability should not outweigh the value of human dignity inherent to the person himself or herself.  For decades, the United Nations pursued the goal of full participation and equality of persons with disabilities, capped by the adoption in the UN General Assembly in 1982 of the World Programme of Action Concerning Disabled Persons – a collective expression of the concern and commitment of the international community to the equalization of opportunities for persons with disabilities.  The United States has also pursued an aggressive legal agenda to better assure enhanced rights and privileges of persons with disabilities in the U.S.  Unfortunately to this day, the goal of full participation, the equalization of opportunities and respect for the human rights of disabled persons remains an elusive dream that has yet to become a reality worldwide.Until now, the majority of the estimated 600 million people with disabilities worldwide, seventy percent or 420 million of whom live in developing countries, and all of whom are entitled to the full range of human rights protection elaborated in international human rights law, continue to suffer inequalities, discrimination and in many cases, even inhuman treatment because of their disabilities.

In theory, disabled people are covered by the existing international human rights framework in the same manner and to the same extent as all people.  In reality, however, the framework is deficient for persons with disabilities in several respects:

* They do not adequately address the unique physical, social, economic and legal circumstances of people with disabilities, and in particular, the common barriers to the enjoyment of their basic human rights such as the right to education, employment, health care, housing and the like;

* The current framework is not effective in identifying practices that lead to severe rights abuses against disabled people; and

* Many of the institutions tasked to ensure enjoyment of PWDs of their basic rights and entitlements are under-resourced.

Let me also stress that as the work to promote and protect the rights of people with disabilities progresses, it is important for everyone to become more aware and conscious about making sure that rights of disabled women and girls be taken into consideration – they being the most vulnerable yet the least protected among disabled persons.  Women and girls with disabilities – particularly in an environment of HIV and AIDS – must be afforded the same protection and benefits as for all disabled persons.

The disabled among us deserve rights and protection based on the principles of equal opportunity, equal rights, equal treatment and non discrimination. Relevant laws must be put into place that are comprehensive in scope and address the economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights of disabled persons.

Persons with disabilities, no matter how their disabilities are defined or perceived, have the claim to all the same human rights that have been articulated in various human rights laws.  In Swaziland, surely the point is not to invent new rights for disabled persons but to ensure the guarantee of the rights already recognized for all people by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other core human rights treaties.

I wish to thank FODSWA, the Government of the Kingdom of Swaziland and non-governmental organizations for your commitment and support to promote and protect the rights of persons with disabilities in Swaziland.  With your unwavering commitment and support to this work, disabled persons can look forward with greater optimism to a
future that promises better treatment and equal opportunities for all those with disabilities.
Thank you.