Hear Leah van Poppel, alongside ermha365’s Social Policy and Advocacy Advisory Isabel Calvert, discuss the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and how it impacts on the disability sector.
One major theme of COVID-19 media reporting has been stories of individuals craving physical contact and struggling with loneliness. But for some people with disability, this isn’t just the byproduct of a pandemic, it’s their everyday existence.
The Federal Government says it “wants answers” on the death of disability care recipient Ann Marie Smith in what police described as “degrading circumstances”, as pressure mounts on federal and state authorities to explain how her case was overlooked.
The essence of human rights is the right of everyone to live a dignified life. A life with shelter, food, access to health care, safety, inclusion in the community and respect. As a community we should value human rights because we value people. People from all backgrounds, living circumstances and abilities. People like Ann-Marie. A police investigation is now underway, and Ann-Marie’s death has been declared a major crime.
The answer to these and similar questions of equal access and fundamental rights of disabled people must be yes. Yes, it is always appropriate for disabled people to advocate for our rights, for full accommodation and inclusion, no matter what else is happening.
Although the experts welcomed the response plan, they say it needs to be based on human rights and principles to make sure ethical decision-making is used. Professor of Bioethics and Director of the Disability Innovation Institute at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Jackie Leach Scully says that the national response plan is just the starting point of ensuring the needs of people with disability are met.
Disabled people know better than most that in a crisis, in times of confusion, fear, and deprivation, rules and norms meant to protect us can disappear like wisps of smoke. But we just don’t know how things will actually play out. That’s another familiar experience for most disabled people … the gap between the way things are supposed to be, the way people think they are, and the way they actually are for people with disabilities.
Unless Governments and communities take action, discrimination against people with disabilities could increase during the COVID-19 pandemic, an expert with the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.
Service providers are warning that 250,000 Australians with a disability are feeling “forgotten” by the emergency response planning for the COVID-19 virus. Peak body National Disability Services warned Federal Human Services Minister Stuart Robert yesterday that disability providers were underprepared for the crisis, with urgent action needed to protect and retain the sector’s workforce.
This website was created as a platform by women and girls with disability, for women and girls with disability. ‘Our Site’ provides practical resources and information across five main areas including human rights, leadership and participation, decision making and choices, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and safety from all forms of violence.Australia.
As a blind person myself, I am all too familiar with such dehumanizing treatment. Often persons with disabilities (PWDs) are treated differently, simply because we look, act, move or communicate differently. But should our differences, stemming from disabilities that we did not choose, be an excuse or justification for others to treat us as lesser individuals?
The index, released by the newly formed Inclusive Australia, found that one in four Australians had experienced a major form of discrimination, such as being overlooked for a job or discouraged from continuing education within the last two years.
We have always been ‘come as you are’. The disability system in Australia is upside down in many ways
Despite being one of the first signatories of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, advocates say 30 years on, Australia is ignoring some of the biggest issues affecting children.
Sometimes, an act of aggression toward disabled people is overt, like firing them from a job or not providing an accessible entrance to a bathroom or building. Other times, it’s subtler — an offhand comment that they’re “so inspiring,” or a cashier assuming they can’t communicate with them. These “microaggressions,” as they’ve come to be known, can still cause pain and reflect ableist attitudes. And people with disabilities can get pretty tired of hearing them.