2012 December 5

Senate Fails to Ratify UN Convention on Rights of Disabled Persons

 

The U.S. Senate on this day fell five votes short of the required two-thirds of the Senate to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. All of the negative votes were cast by Republicans.

Ironically, the UN Convention, which was signed on March 30, 2007, was modeled after the pioneering 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, passed on July 26, 1990. The U.S. has also never ratified the UN Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (December 18, 1979) because of conservative Republican opposition.

One of the most impressive — and moving– events in the lobbying for passage of the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) was the “Capitol Crawl” on March 12, 1990. Sixty disabled people who were in Washington, DC, along with others to lobby for the ADA, put aside their wheelchairs and other mobility devices and literally crawled up the 83 stone steps on the west side the the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, to lobby for passage of the ADA. The event became famous as the “Capitol Crawl.”

On December 3, 1982, the United Nations declared December 3rd the International Day of Disabled Persons.

Learn About the UN Convention: http://www.un.org/disabilities/

Learn more:  Kim Nielsen, A Disability History of the United States (2012)

Learn more about the rights of disabled persons: https://www.aclu.org/disability-rights

Watch an interview with disability rights activist Judith Heumann: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Crf44pj2Gg

Learn more: Fred Pelka, What We Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement (2012)

And more at the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund: http://dredf.org/

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