WUNRN
CALL FROM WOMEN ENABLED TO SIGN ON
LETTER FOR INCLUSION OF ISSUES OF WOMEN AND GIRLS WITH DISABILITIES
IN AGENDA OF CSW 57
Please Read Introduction &
Scroll Down to Letter for Requested Sign-On.
Urgent, Please - Sign-On Requested
by September 7 Noon US Eastern Time.
Excerpt
(See full letter below) -"We, the undersigned human rights, disability
rights and women’s rights organizations and individuals, write with respect to
the importance of the inclusion of issues of concern to women and girls with
disabilities in the agenda of the United Nations Commission on the Status of
Women (CSW), especially as it considers its priority thematic issue on the prevention and elimination of all forms of violence against women at its 57th session in March 2013.)[1]"
________________________________________________________
Dear Colleagues,
I have drafted the below letter to various UN entities and associated individuals involved with The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) and in the planning for the 57th Session of CSW addressing violence against women. The purpose of this letter is to ensure that issues concerning violence against women and girls with disabilities are addressed and also to ensure that women with disabilities are engaged in leadership roles as CSW policies and program planning proceeds.
At past CSW sessions women with disabilities have not been integrated into the discussions, major official panels and outcomes, other than at side events organized by women with disabilities. Women with disabilities and our issues have not been part of the Expert Group Meetings usually held in September in advance of the CSW session the next February-March. Additionally, the Prepatory Papers rarely include issues of women with disabilities. All this is discussed in greater detail in the leter below.
I am seeking organizations to sign on to this letter, which already has support from other organizations and individuals. Unfortunately, the time frames are very short as the Expert Group Meeting will be held in only a few days in Thailand.
Thus, I am asking you and your organizations to sign on to this letter and/or for other organizations who have representatives on this list to sign on as well.
IMPORTANT: Please sign on by this coming Friday, September 7 at noon U.S. Eastern time so that I have time to assemble all signatories and get the letter to the relevant parties in a timely fashion to have a positive impact.
I hope you can join on this important effort. The text of the letter is below and, unfortunately, it cannot be changed at this point.
Thank you.
Stephanie
Stephanie Ortoleva, Esq.
International Human Rights
Lawyer and Consultant
Founder and President, WomenEnabled
Co-chair, ASIL International
Disability Rights Interest Group
International Human Rights Lawyer,
Researcher and Consultant
+1.202.359.3045
Washington, DC, United States
Stephanieortoleva@gmail.com and Womenenabled@gmail.com
*****************************************************************
Check
out updates on my website at: www.WomenEnabled.org, follow
me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WomenEnabled,
read my papers on the Social Science Research Network at http://ssrn.com/author=1875099 and
connect with me on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/ under Stephanie
Ortoleva, for information on human rights, women’s
rights and the rights of women with disabilities internationally.
****** Read just-released 228-page Report by Stephanie Ortoleva & Hope Lewis: “Forgotten Sisters - A Report on Violence against Women with Disabilities: & Overview of Its Nature, Scope, Causes & Consequences.” Download the complete report & abstract on the Social Science Research Network website at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2133332.
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September
1, 2012
|
Michelle
Bachelet, Under-Secretary-General
of the UN Executive
Director, UN Women |
Noeleen
Heyzer, Under-Secretary-General
of the UN Executive
Secretary, Economic & Social Commission
for Asia and the Pacific |
|
Babatunde Osotimehin Under-Secretary-General
of the UN Executive
director, UN Population Fund |
Marjon
V. Kamara CSW
Chair & Ambassador Mission of the Republic of Liberia to
the UN |
|
Irina
Velichko CSW
Vice-Chair & Second Secretary Mission of the Republic of Belarus to
the UN |
Ana
Marie Hernando CSW
Vice-Chair & Second Secretary Mission
of the Philippines to the UN |
|
Carlos
Enrique García González CSW
Vice-Chair & Deputy Representative Mission
of El Salvador to the UN |
Filippo
Cinti, CSW Vice Chair First
Secretary Mission of Italy to the UN |
|
Nduku
Kilonzo Exec.
Director, Liverpool VCT (Kenya) |
Marai
Larasi, Co-Chair End
Violence against Women (UK) |
|
Margarita
Quintanilla Director,
PATH/InterCambios (Nicaragua) |
Soon-Young
Yoon, Chair,
NGO CSW/NY |
Dear
CSW Leadership & Partners,
We,
the undersigned human rights, disability rights and women’s rights
organizations and individuals, write with respect to the importance of the
inclusion of issues of concern to women and girls with disabilities in the
agenda of the United Nations Commission on the Status of
Women
(CSW), especially as it considers its priority thematic issue on the prevention
and elimination of all forms of violence against women at its 57th
session in March 2013.)[1]
Despite
the implications for more than 500 million women and girls with disabilities
and their families, issues concerning women with disabilities receive only
limited, or even invisible, coverage in influential CSW Expert
Group Meetings and prepatory papers. There is also scant inclusion of
issues concerning women with disabilities in side events at CSW sessions, other
than those organized by women with disabilities themselves. CSW can
contribute to a more inclusive and effective awareness of violence
against all women by welcoming women with disabilities to these discussions
We
draw your attention to the just released 228-page Report: Stephanie Ortoleva
and Hope Lewis, Forgotten Sisters - A Report on Violence Against Women with
Disabilities: An Overview of its Nature, Scope, Causes and Consequences (August
21, 2012). Northeastern University School of Law Research Paper No. 104-2012.
Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2133332.
This
report, prepared by two international human rights lawyers and a team of law
student research assistants, reviews available information on the scope, nature,
causes and consequences of violence against women and girls with disabilities,
drawing on research by academics, practitioners, women with disabilities,
Disabled Peoples Organizations (DPOs), governments and international and
regional organizations and discusses significant gaps in the research and makes
recommendations for future action. We urgently request that this valuable
resource be included as part of the CSW57 preparatory papers to ensure that
issues concerning violence against women and girls with disabilities are
addressed.
The
timing of the issuance of this Report is fortuitous as the Commission on the
Status of Women prepares for its 57th Session with the thematic
issue of the prevention and elimination of violence against women. As the
CSW embarks on its Expert Group Meeting[2]
and the development of the associated preparatory papers for CSW 57, it is
urgent that women with disabilities have a significant role in these
processes. Determining viable policy on the prevention and elimination
of violence against women requires the inclusion of all stakeholders, including
women with disabilities who are experts on these issues. Drawing on
the core principle of “Nothing About Us Without Us” which was an intrinsic
element of the drafting of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities (CRPD,) women with disabilities should be part of
these CSW processes.[3]
Situation of Women & Girls with
Disabilities Globally: Given how greatly women and girls with
disabilities are affected by the double discrimination and gender and
disability stereotyping they face because of both gender and disability, they
deserve to be heard. There are approximately one billion persons with
disabilities in the world, which constitutes 15 percent of the global
population[4] The World Health Organization (WHO)
and the World Bank (WB) recent (9 June 2011) ground-breaking report entitled
“World Report on Disability,” notes a dramatic increase in estimates of the
number of persons with disabilities worldwide. There are significant
differences in the prevalence of disability between men and women in both
developing and more developed countries: male disability prevalence rate
is 12% and female disability prevalence rate is 19.2%.[5]
[6]
Violence and Women & Girls with Disabilities: The 2011 Report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women focused on the multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination that contribute to and exacerbate violence against women, noting that factors such as ability, age, access to resources, race/ethnicity, language, religion, sexual orientation and class can exacerbate the violence women with disabilities experience. Violence against women and girls with disabilities is perpetrated and/or condoned by the State and private actors within public and private institutions and in the transnational sphere. The forms of violence to which women with disabilities are subjected are varied; physical, psychological, sexual or financial violence, neglect, entrapment, degradation, and forced sterilization and psychiatric treatment. Women with disabilities are twice or three times as likely to experience domestic and other forms of gender-based and sexual violence as non-disabled women, and are likely to experience abuse over a longer period and to suffer more severe injuries as a result of the violence. Their abuser may also be their caregiver, someone that the individual is reliant on for personal care or mobility, frequently they do not report the violence, often lack access to legal protection, law enforcement officials are ill-equipped to address the violence and they are not privy to the same information available to non-disabled women. Sexual and gender-based violence contributes to the incidence of disability among women and girls.
Some
other issues which exacerbate violence against women and girls with
disabilities, include the following: women with disabilities are the
poorest among the poor because of discriminatory employment practices; they are
denied educational opportunities because education was not provided for girls,
or school facilities were not accessible to them and programs were not designed
to meet their needs; they are unable to travel from place to place because of
the dangers of violence, which cannot be mitigated because they
cannot afford assistive devices like wheelchairs or access transportation
systems; they are often the last in the family to receive food because they are
viewed as useless, and because they may be too indigent to afford
food; they are more likely than men with disabilities or women without
disabilities to experience violence and other forms of discrimination,
and are unaware of helpful services, or such
services are not accessible to them; they are not able to receive health care
services, including sexual and reproductive health care services, because these
services are not in accessible locations (due to the fact that
the availability of these services are communicated in
ways that are not accessible to them), and because
health care providers cannot communicate with them or believe they are asexual;
they are unable to access the justice system, especially for sexual violence
cases, either because the police and judges cannot
communicate with them or do not find their testimony credible, or because they
have no information on how to access the system; and they are sometimes
unwilling to return to their former home communities because of the fear of
being ostracized based on their disability, or because the
shelter in the refugee camp was slightly more accessible than their former
home. Greater detail on these issues can be found in the Ortoleva and
Lewis paper referenced above.
Legal
and Policy Basis for Inclusion: The recommendation for the inclusion
of issues of concern to women and girls with disabilities in the work of the
CSW is drawn from and is consistent with the gender-sensitive,
disability-inclusive approaches outlined in the United Nations Charter,[7] and consistent with the provisions of
the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), especially
its Article 6 on Women with Disabilities,[8]
the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW), especially its Article 14[9]
and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), as well as the[10] 1995 Beijing Declaration and[11] and the 2000 Special Session of the
UN General Assembly, reviewing the progress of the outcomes of the Fourth World
Conference on Women.[12]
The UN General Assembly has over the
last few years issued a series of resolutions, especially Resolutions A/65/186
and A/64/131,[13] calling for the
mainstreaming of persons with disabilities in development, and has specifically
called upon Governments to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women
with disabilities
Women and girls with disabilities look
forward to participating in CSW 57 and hope that the comments and resources we
have shared will result in the greater inclusion of a substantive discussion of
violence against women and girls with disabilities at the session as well as
the greater participation of women and girls with disabilities. Please
contact Ms. Ortoleva at +1.202.359.3045 or WomenEnabled@gmail.com.
Signed,