EU participation on the States Party Conference of the UN Convention on the Righst of Persons with Disabilities

The Fourth conference of State Parties of the UN Convention on the Rights of Person with Disabilities was organized in the premises of the UN in New York.

This was the first Conference of State Parties after the EU becoming a Party to the Convention but also the first for which the Code of Conduct adopted in 2010 had to be applied.

The theme of the fourth session of the Conference was “Enabling Development, Realizing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities”. The sub-themes were: “Realizing the Convention through International Cooperation”, “Political and Civil Participation” and “Work and Employment”. The President of the Bureau of the Conference was Sweden, with Vice-Presidents Hungary, Jamaica, Sierra Leone and Thailand. The agenda also contained substantive roundtable discussions and an interactive informal session with civil society. The panelists were a mix of users with disabilities, experts, representatives of UN agencies and members of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

During the opening session the European Union was given particular praise as the first regional body to have ratified the Convention.

During the event a number of good practices on the topics above were presented in the statements by 34 countries including the EU and 8 Member States[1]. These will be compiled together with the contributions sent by other State Parties and signatories of the Convention. The EU general statement as well as the 2 statements on employment and development cooperation will also be included. Furthermore the Commission intervened in the general session and in the session on employment on the bases of these statements addressing key issues raised by the panelists.In the general session the State parties presented key areas of work in order to implement the Convention. There were a number of recurrent themes arising from these statements addressing the paradigm shift from the medical model to the social model of disability. The relevance of tackling disability problems to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals featured prominently. The need to include persons with disabilities themselves in the mainstreaming of the Convention was an important theme. Key areas highlighted were Accessibility, Employment, Education and de-institutionalisation.



The panelists of the first Roundtable: "Realizing the CRPD through international cooperation" addressed the need for stronger strategies in this area and gave their support to the UN intentions to stress disability matters in the policy discussions on the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, particularly referring to the organization of a High Level Meeting on this matter in 2012. The need for greater cooperation between donor and recipient states to support the implementation of the Convention was indicated as well as the importance of empowering recipient countries to set their own priorities for funding. A call was made for more and better qualified human resources in this area. Various interventions from recipient countries mentioned the EU support in relevant projects.

[1]Sweden, Belgium, , Lithuania, Austria, Spain, Germany, Hungary,UK,