Home| Information about political issues UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities It's one year since the signing of the UN Convention on disability rights. Why hasn't it been ratified by the UK government? New
equalities legislation comes into force Equality Duty - a two year enquiry called for an integrated equality duty for public bodies, covering race, disability, gender, age and sexual orientation. |
New UN Convention to ratification without reservation The Convention is the first international treaty in history to create a specific legal framework to protect the human rights of disabled people across the globe and to recognise that disabled and non-disabled people share a common humanity. 20 countries need to ratify the Convention before it becomes legally binding. To date only 17 have done so. The UK is not among them. The UK signed the Convention in March 2007. Since then 2,000 people have signed a petition on this site calling on the Government to ratify it without delay. In response to pressure from campaigners the UK has pledged to ratify the Convention by the end of 2008. However, the Convention Campaign Coalition (CCC) is increasingly concerned that the Government might try to reserve, or opt out of, certain Convention rights. Reserving against certain Convention articles means that some parts of the Convention would not be legally binding in the UK. Human Rights are inalienable and universal. If the UK is truly committed to disabled people’s human rights it cannot pick and choose which Convention rights it is willing to support. It'd be grateful if you could all sign it and encourage your networks to do the same. |
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PSI Network (Physical and Sensory Impairment Network - Leeds): |
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Working together to share information, to improve communication, and to represent the interests and concerns of disabled people. |