I don’t want people to identify me according to my weaknesses.
I’m a person who is capable to do things regardless of the impairment I have or the disability I have.
The UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities, I think, has really been a game changer
in the disability rights movement.
It’s really kind of put disability rights on the map.
What we’ve seen is that around the world you see disability advocates and people with disabilities
engaged in policy conversations and engaged in policy debates in their country
to change the experience in their everyday lives.
What made the disability rights movement stronger is the fact that we were capable to come together.
Blind, and deaf, and people with developmental disabilities, intellectual disabilities, et cetera.
But still, we have this challenge continuing as we speak.
The convention is important because it’s the first international treaty which contains
binding law on the human rights of people with disabilities.
A real hot spot in the negotiations was the issue of legal capacity and recognizing that
all people regardless of disability have rights and the right to act.
As autonomous beings ourselves, we wouldn’t want our choices taken away from us.
Even if we know they have the wrong decisions.
Many people do not believe that persons with disabilities have the capacity to decide,
have the capacity to be bound by the law, have the capacity to sue and be sued.
Human rights don’t emerge.
Human rights are claimed and recognized, and I think that’s how they come into being.
So, Article 12 is the right to legal capacity.
It’s equality before the law.
The right to legal capacity is really about upholding their right to exercise their legal personhood.
It’s the bedrock of all rights, because if you don’t have legal capacity,
then your rights are taken away.
And so for us it’s been a huge priority in our work to ensure that people will not
have their legal personhood stripped.
The fact that persons from the movement are more and more involved into politics, policy,
and working internationally, that will at some point bring better results.
So, we are now in a—let’s say—new phase where we are in a possibility to use both CRPD
and the Agenda 2030 to move the rights of people with disabilities forward.
Because of the convention, governments have much more awareness about disability issues.
They know they should do something.
They don’t always know what to do.
And I think, even now with the convention, one of the huge challenges is giving governments
the tools they need to be able to figure out how to achieve the things they’ve committed to.
It’s more than just about the writing, you know, the letter of the law.
It’s also about societal attitudes towards disability, how people view disability.
So, I think in terms of changing people’s perceptions about disability, it could take a bit of time.
We certainly have a long way to go, but it’s quite amazing in a very short amount of time
to see such progress, I think.
Look now, you know, 40 years later the world is a different place for people with disabilities,
but I think that more than this, we moved from being the most excluded group
to being a group that is contributing to changing important paradigms of society.
We have many challenges ahead.
But I think that we have a real chance of changing things.
It’s really creating societies that no longer see disability as something to be negatively viewed.
It’s just part of human diversity.