Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA):
Submission to the Australian Government on the on the 'Chairman's Text for a Comprehensive and Integral International Convention to Promote and Protect the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities'

Contents

Recommendation

About Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA)

Introduction

As explained by Ambassador Don McKay in his covering letter to the Chair's Text, although there has been general agreement that disabled women are at a particular disadvantage and their situation needs to be appropriately covered by the Convention, there is no consensus as to how that will be achieved; ie: whether there needs to be a separate Article dealing with women with disabilities, or whether this could be covered in other parts of the draft convention. This fundamental issue needs to be resolved at the next Ad Hoc Committee meeting in January 2006.

Given the extremely short time frame for consultations on the Chair's Text, WWDA's submission is necessarily brief and focuses explicitly on provisional Article 6 - Women With Disabilities.

Gender & Disability & the Draft Convention - The Context

The Position of Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA)

WWDA strongly recommends that the Australian Government heed and represent the views and aspirations of disabled women in Australia by supporting the inclusion of an Interpretive Article on Women With Disabilities in the Comprehensive and Integral International Convention to Promote and Protect the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities.

The Need for an Interpretive Article on Women With Disabilities

In relation to women with disabilities, there is clearly a need for a dual strategy approach (also often referred to as a 'twin track' approach) to the drafting of the Convention. This means that there is a need for general recognition of the impact of multiple discriminations caused by the intersection of gender and disability, along with specific recognition of the additional disadvantage women with disabilities face.

Including an Interpretive article on women with disabilities in the convention should not be interpreted as meaning that all other articles in the Convention do somehow 'not apply' to women with disability. Rather the inclusion of a specific article on women with disabilities has the potential to hasten much needed reform and change for disabled women by explicitly stating that focused, gender-specific measures WILL be necessary to ensure the equal right of women with disabilities to the enjoyment of all rights set forth in the Convention.

an Interpretive article on women with disabilities in the Convention has the potential to provide the impetus for States to:

• Focus on the needs and particular concerns of women with disabilities;
• Provide a basis for establishing and re-orienting delivery of services and programs to disabled women;
• Identify policies and strategies which will provide a reference point for policy development and resource allocation;
• Provide clear rationale for the development of specific programs;
• Develop and maintain mechanisms which increase the participation and representation of disabled women in all decision-making;
• Provide a basis for monitoring, evaluating and reporting progress.

Therefore, Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA) asserts that the Convention should contain an Interpretive Article on Women With Disabilities, in recognition of the need to acknowledge, emphasise and address the particular disadvantages faced by women with disabilities the world over. Such an article should make explicit the impact of multiple discriminations caused by the intersection of gender and disability, and should explicitly state that focused, gender-specific measures will be necessary to ensure the equal right of women with disabilities to the enjoyment of all rights set forth in the Convention.

For example:

Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)

At the Sixth Ad Hoc Committee meeting in August 2005, the Australian Government delegation put forward its position that it did not support the inclusion of an Interpretive Article on women with disabilities in the Convention. It did however, support recognition of the particular vulnerabilities of women with disabilities in the Preamble. The Australian Government delegation argued:

Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA) rejects the notion that, in relation to women with disabilities, the Convention on the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities would somehow duplicate the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

It is well recognised the world over, that CEDAW has not, and does not, adequately address the issue of discrimination of disabled women. CEDAW has been criticised by women with disabilities and their advocates for its abject failure to acknowledge and/or respond to the human rights violations of disabled women.

CEDAW is arguably, the most important human rights treaty for women, yet it does not mention disabled women. Recognising that disabled women are not explicitly mentioned in the Convention, the monitoring body of the treaty (the Committee on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women) passed a general recommendation on disabled women to ensure that States Parties understand that this instrument also covers the human rights of disabled women. General Recommendation 18 requests States Parties to provide information on disabled women in their periodic reports and on measures taken to deal with their particular situation, including special measures to ensure they have equal access to education and employment, health services, and social security and to ensure that they can participate in all areas of social life and culture.

The Optional Protocol to CEDAW was adopted unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly on 6 October 1999. The Optional Protocol contains two procedures: a communications procedure allowing individuals, or groups of individuals, to submit claims of violations of rights to the Committee on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women; and an inquiry procedure, enabling the Committee to initiate inquiries into situations of grave or systemic violations of women's rights. Individuals may make communications only if the nation concerned is a party to the protocol. As of September 2005, there were 76 signatories to the Optional Protocol.

The Australian Government has, to date, refused to sign the Optional Protocol to CEDAW, meaning that women with disabilities in Australia have effectively been locked out of using an enforcement mechanism to investigate violations of their human rights.

It is clear that despite the existence of CEDAW and in fact, other human rights treaties, women with disabilities the world over continue to experience serious violations of their human rights, as well as failures to promote and fulfill their rights.

It is widely acknowledged that the overall attention given to disability in the existing human rights treaties (including CEDAW) is still relatively limited. In reaching an assessment of how the existing treaty bodies have done, Professors Gerard Quinn and Theresia Degener, in their comprehensive study for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (2003) concluded:

According to Byrnes (2003), it seems unlikely that the existing human rights treaty bodies would in the future be able to bring the focus and attention to disability issues that they do not now provide in a sustained manner. He states: "the case for a new convention is a compelling one if we want to achieve a satisfactory focus on disability issues at the international level, to influence national policy-making, and to stimulate greater awareness of disability issues in the existing human rights bodies".

Signatories to CEDAW have shown scant regard for women with disabilities in their Progress Reports on Implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Australia is no exception.

An analysis of five States Parties Progress Reports undertaken by Quinn and Degener, found that none of the Reports reached the benchmarks for reporting on women with disabilities set under Recommendation 18 on disabled women and in the reporting guidelines (Quinn, G & Degener, T. 2002).

The Australian Government's Report 'Women in Australia' (the combined Fourth and Fifth Reports on Implementing the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) does not provide information on women with disabilities as required under Recommendation 18. The Report therefore gives a false picture of the reality of the position of women with disabilities in Australia. An example can be used to highlight:

The 'Women in Australia' Report states that:

and as an example states that there has been:

However, in 2003 the labour force participation rate of women with disabilities was only 46.9%. The unemployment rate of non-disabled women in 2003 was 5.3% (down from 8.0% in 1998), compared to 8.3% for disabled women (virtually the same as in 1998 when the rate was 8.6%) (WWDA 2005). The 'Women in Australia' report provides no information at all on the status of women with disabilities in relation to employment, despite their obvious marginalisation and exclusion in the labour market. With one of the lowest rates of labour force success and one of the highest rates of poverty, women with disabilities clearly stand out as a group in need of greater opportunities for employment, yet the 'Women in Australia' Report does not even acknowledge the stark disparity between disabled and non-disabled women in relation to employment.

There are a multitude of other examples that can be used to demonstrate the weakness of CEDAW as it relates to women with disabilities in Australia. However, to provide a detailed analysis of CEDAW and women with disabilities, is clearly outside the scope of this Submission. What is important however, is to acknowledge that CEDAW and the way the Australian Government reports on the implementation of CEDAW, has serious shortcomings for women with disabilities.

In meeting the requirements set under Recommendation 18 and in the general Reporting Principles, Progress reports on the implementation of CEDAW should contain information on the situation of women with disabilities under each right, including their current de-facto and de jure situation, measures taken to enhance their status, progress made and difficulties and obstacles encountered.

It is also important to acknowledge that the development of a UN Convention for People with Disabilities does not mean that other existing human rights treaties (including CEDAW) will cease to apply to disabled people. The human rights guarantees in these existing treaties will continue to apply to people with disabilities. It will still be necessary to obtain maximum advantage from the existing human rights instruments. The adoption of a UN Convention to Promote and Protect the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities. should be seen as a complement to, and not an enemy of, the existing instruments (WWDA 2005; Quinn & Degener 2002).

References

Return to Home Page

This site was developed by Carolyn Frohmader for Women With Disabilities Australia.