'A World Enabled': fighting for the human rights of persons with disabilities.

More than 600 million persons, almost 10 per cent of the world's population, have a disability. This number will rise dramatically in the coming years as the population ages and more people become disabled by HIV/AIDS. For this reason, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information Shashi Tharoor has stated that the development of the Comprehensive and Integral International Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities is one of the ten most important stories the world should hear more about. A World Enabled was established to directly respond to this challenge. As advocates with disabilities, it is not simply our responsibility to voice a call for human rights but also to share and implement the articles we have secured.

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In most countries, people with disabilities and their families are socially stigmatized, politically marginalized and economically disadvantaged. The United Nations Global Programme on Disability has stated: "Disability tends to be couched within a medical and welfare framework, identifying people with disabilities as ill, different from their non-disabled peers, and in need of care. Because the emphasis is on the medical needs of people with disabilities, there is a corresponding neglect of their wider social needs."

It is our belief that the media, coupled with local action, is essential to the implementation of the proposed treaty. In fact, a provocative feature-length documentary is already under way, which will document the lives of five disabled delegates from Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and North America by sharing their worlds. It will chronicle the personal struggles that led them to devote the rest of their lives to ensure that people with disabilities are no longer deprived of internationally recognized human rights, such as the right to live, freedom from torture and inhuman and degrading treatment, bodily and psychological integrity, liberty, equality, association, family/privacy, recognition as a person before the law, freedom of expression, to vote and stand for elections, citizenship, and recognition of people with disabilities as a minority.

Any new human rights document is only as effective as those organizations and Governments charged with ensuring that these rights are realized. For this reason, we are creating with our international partners "A World Enabled" (AWE), a new social change media project, which includes a set of programmes that provide disability-related human rights literature and instructional materials to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), academic institutions and government agencies. AWE will go far beyond physical access for people with disabilities and look at disability as a global human rights issue. It will use worldwide digital mass communications as creative tools to challenge, examine, illuminate and inspire action for political and social change.

For the media component, the Victor Pineda Foundation has partnered with Michael Fried, President of Public Interest TV Films, to develop television programmes, streaming media, documentary films and public service announcements. Education and outreach efforts will include digital world disability curriculum, world disability oral history archive, seminars, symposia, books and publications. Specific AWE programmes will feature dramatic and compelling stories and oral histories of a broad group of disabled doers. They will also address the implementation and promotion of specific articles, such as article 24, which assures the right to sports, recreation and play. Elise Roy and Jessica Andersen are already creating and implementing the first programme in this initiative. Their unique and innovative programme, Ready Set Go, will educate children with disabilities about human rights issues and HIV/AIDS through culturally specific sports-education exercises.

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Through these efforts, we hope to create programmes that share a radically new way of thinking about what constitutes independence by showing who is empowered and what integration truly means. The world's abilities must be enabled. A failure to respond to the concerns of people with disabilities ignores one of the great humanitarian and human rights challenges today.

A World Enabled addresses disability as an international human rights issue. It illuminates how central the disability community is to expanding economic and social development, and addresses issues of social change, discrimination, acceptance, education and employment. This project aims to educate, inform and promote a new framework from which to view society. As a social model of disability, it will create an invaluable tool that social, educational and health institutions can use in training colloquia and will also serve NGOs involved in human rights.

AWE was initially conceived by Victor Pineda through his participation as a delegate to the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on a Comprehensive and Integral Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities. It also evolved through his work as the producer/director of the award-winning documentary, Cuba Disabled, and from his trip last summer to Bosnia and Herzegovina where he began filming Broken Balkans. In 2004, he joined forces with Mr. Fried, who has spent thirty years as a producer, director and arts educator.

The economic cost to society of excluding people with disabilities is enormous. The United States National Council on Disability has stated: "No nation in the world will achieve its full potential for economic development while it leaves out people with disabilities. No society will be a complete democracy unless people with disabilities can participate in public life."

RELATED ARTICLE: Advancing Rights for Disabled Persons

From its early days, the United Nations has sought to advance the status of disabled persons and improve their lives. The concern of the United Nations for the well-being and rights of the disabled is rooted in its founding principles, which are based on human rights, fundamental freedoms and equality of all human beings. As affirmed by the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants on human rights and related instruments, persons with disabilities are entitled to exercise their civil, political, social and cultural rights on an equal basis with non-disabled persons.

In the 1940s and 1950s, the UN provided assistance to Governments in disability prevention and the rehabilitation of disabled persons through advisory missions, workshops for training technical personnel and the setting up of rehabilitation centres.

In the 1970s, UN initiatives expanded the international concept of human rights of persons with disabilities and equality of opportunities for them. In 1971, the UN General Assembly adopted the "Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons", stipulating that they have the same rights as other human beings, as well as specific rights corresponding to their needs in the medical, educational and social fields. In 1975, the General Assembly adopted the "Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons", which sets the standard for equal treatment and access to services that help to develop capabilities of persons with disabilities and accelerate their social integration.

The World Programme of Action concerning Disabled Persons, with an emphasis on equalization of opportunities, rehabilitation and prevention of disabilities, was adopted by the Assembly in 1982, on 3 December, the day now being observed annually as the International Day of Disabled Persons.

Among the major outcomes of the 1983-1992 UN Decade of Disabled Persons was the Standard Rules on Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities, adopted by the Assembly in 1993. The Rules serve as an instrument for policy-making and as a basis for technical and economic cooperation. Recent UN world conferences have also addressed the situation of people with disabilities, making recommendations to rectify past discriminatory practices and promote the rights of the disabled to participate fully in all aspects of society as citizens of their countries. Emerging themes are accessibility to new technologies, in particular information and communications technologies, as well as the inclusion of a disability dimension in policy recommendations covering a wide spectrum of social and economic concerns.

Victor Santiago Pineda is an award-winning independent film producer and President of the Victor Pineda Foundation, a disability advocacy organization. He has collaborated with the World Bank and UN agencies, as well as with policy makers and heads of State, in promoting equal opportunity, access and inclusion for the disabled.

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