August 25th, 2006, will long be remembered by 600 million people around the world who have a disability, writes Gerard Quinn
The United Nations finally agreed last week on the text of a new treaty on the rights of persons with disabilities.
It will be formally adopted by the UN General Assembly later this autumn and then opened for ratification. The initiative for this treaty came from Mexico and early moves for it were strongly supported by the Department for Foreign Affairs which has played a constructive part throughout.
It is expected that it will become one of the most widely ratified human rights treaties partly because it carries no ideological baggage from the cold war.
Fittingly, it is the first human rights treaty of the 21st century and should accelerate the trend under way in most corners of the world towards respecting and advancing the rights of persons with disabilities. It will reinforce reform efforts under way in many countries, such as Ireland and will help ignite reform in those countries that have yet to begin a serous reform effort.
As the drafting approached its climax last week in New York much was made of the fact that only 40 or so countries in the world have systematic anti-discrimination legislation in place covering persons with disabilities. That is clearly set to increase and the Irish experience will be invaluable to others.
The purpose of the treaty is to "ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights" for persons with disabilities. It does not invent new rights. Rather, it seeks to ensure that existing human rights, taken for granted by most, are in fact equally enjoyed by persons with disabilities.
It rests not merely on the traditional values of dignity, autonomy and independence, but also links these to participation and inclusion in society. In other words, human rights are not seen as static protections against power, but also as the means by which people can play their own part in society.
The obligations undertaken by states - when they ratify - will include obligations to legislate, to repeal inconsistent legislation, to mainstream disability into policy-setting and to promote a consciousness of rights within professional training.
This should be particularly important in the field of service delivery. With regard to this area there is no hard obligation to provide all services immediately. Instead, the existing formula of international law was grafted on to the treaty to oblige states to progressively achieve the delivery of resources.
Essentially, this is understood to require rational and principled decision-making with respect to resource allocation with a forward moving dynamic and some minimum floors.
The treaty innovates in the field of information and communications technology. It aims at full inclusion in the information age. This is crucially important as our economy, and society, becomes much more knowledge-based. It also innovates in the field of development aid and requires states to ensure that their own development aid programmes are inclusive of, and accessible to, persons with disabilities.
This is simply good practice and is already being implemented by the US development aid programme (Usaid) as well as that of Germany.
The 1990s saw an explosive growth in national human rights institutions, such as the Irish Human Rights Commission, throughout the world. This treaty requires states to engage these institutions in the process of monitoring domestic compliance.
Against strong opposition from some countries, the new treaty will establish an international monitoring committee to assess compliancy. Like all other human rights treaties, states will have to report on progress made and obstacles encountered in implementation.
A separate protocol will attach to the treaty enabling the committee to entertain individual complaints and inquiries into systematic abuses. This will have to be ratified separately as the drafting was not without controversy, especially in the area of legal capacity and health.
There was substantial Irish input into the drafting of the treaty. Moreover, the former Irish president of Rehabilitation International, Dr Arthur O'Reilly, was hugely influential in getting the treaty on to the agenda. The National Disability Authority kept people informed about the process, holding an important session on the vexed issue of legal capacity under the treaty. In addition, many civil society groups made their presence felt.
The Irish Human Rights Commission was ably represented at most of the drafting sessions. The commission's president Dr Maurice Manning, who was present at the climactic session last week in New York said: "I am hugely gratified that human rights commissions from around the world have collaborated so effectively in bringing this treaty to fruition . . . and the linking of the aims of the treaty with development aid is especially welcome."
Gerard Quinn is Prof of Law at NUI, Galway, and was a delegate on behalf of the Irish Human Rights Commission to the UN drafting committee that drew up the treaty