Human Rights
Disability is a Human Rights issue
The right to be born equal in freedom and dignity, the right to personal integrity and self-determination: Human Rights are fundamental. They exist independently of laws passed in a society, and cannot be constrained by customs or beliefs of a particular community. We have human rights whether there are laws to uphold them or not. They are universal and indivisible.
Every day disabled people are denied their human rights.
When a person is excluded from employment because they are disabled, it is discrimination. If a child is excluded from education because they are disabled, their rights are being violated. If a disabled person is institutionalised against their will it is a violation of their fundamental human rights.
We believe that with out the inclusion of disabled people in the human rights agenda we will never have equality.
We believe that it is only through recognition that disability is socially constructed that we will achieve dignity.
We believe that celebrating our diversity will give us freedom.
The DAA publishes the following three papers on the subjects related to Human Rights
Are Disabled People Human?
A contribution to the discussion on the nature of human nature.
Overcoming Obstacles
Are Disabled People Included?
An exposure document on the violation of disabled people's human rights and the solutions recommended within the UN Standard Rules.
It Is Our World Too!
A Report on the Lives of Disabled Children for the UN General Assembly Special Session on Children
New York, September 2001.
Published on behalf of Rights for Disabled Children. Written by Gerison Lansdown
We Are Children Too!
There is international recognition that all children are subjects of rights and that governments have obligations to protect, promote and fulfil those rights. Unfortunately this protection is still not, despite the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), being properly implemented for disabled children.
Social Mode Unsocial Muddle?
It is becoming increasingly clear that one of the key issues in disability activism-the Social Model of Disability-is subject to repeated attacks, particularly within the academic community. What is equally clear is that much of the ‘bad press' has been prompted by interpretations of the social model that many of us would find particularly strange.
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