PHM-Exch> R: PHM Right To Health position paper now online!

[Sunil Deepak]

Dear all,

thanks to all the persons and organisations that have worked on the preparation of Right to Health position paper and the tool kit for monitoring the adherence to RTH approach in national health policies.

I would like to bring up the issue of learning from the experiences of others in continuing our work on RTH. I am referring to the work done by organisations of persons with disabilities for their human rights.

In December 2006 the United Nations approved the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) along with an optional protocol. It came into force on 8 May 2008. According to latest information, CRPD has been signed by 153 countries and has been ratified by national parliaments of 112 countries. How did they manage to do so much in such a short time?

CRPD is accompanied by a UN monitoring mechanism so that each signatory country is required to (1) update national laws to ensure the compliance with articles of CRPD (2) present a periodic report of national implementation to the UN monitoring body. Organisations of persons with disabilities (DPOs)  in different countries are taking an active role in raising up issues of violations of human rights and are also going to courts to hold their governments to account.

If you ask persons with disabilities in the communities, most of them would not know what is CRPD. But if you ask this question to their national DPOs, it will be difficult to find an organisation in any country where persons do not know about CRPD and have not participated in some kind of capacity building about implementation and monitoring of their Convention. CRPD is available in easy to understand format for children and other persons who are not familiar with international conventions.

Compared to CRPD and the success of DPOs, our own efforts for promoting RTH seem to be lagging far behind and more of an uphill struggle. Some of the reasons for this are clear. We don't have our national representative organisations and federations that can speak with one voice, ask for the Governments to listen to them and speak at international level. We do not have a body like International Disability Alliance (IDA) that brings together international networks and federations of national DPOs, professionals, international NGOs, UN organisations, etc. that can speak for us in one voice.

However, perhaps we can learn from them about how they did it, how they are doing it?

With best wishes,

Sunil

Dr Sunil Deepak
AIFO and PHM Italy

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The RTH position paper is now online!!

http://www.phmovement.org/en/campaigns/145/page

Anneleen De Keukelaere
Global Networking Co-ordinator People's Health Movement


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