Disability Buzz: What's New
Human Rights
International discussion of Human Rights reached a crescendo recently when the UN Commission on Human Rights voted the U.S. out of membership on this important body, which was created with the strong support of Eleanor Roosevelt in 1947. Featured in this issue of Disability World are two human rights stories: one describing a new Latin American plan to increase human rights of people with disabilities in that region, and a Human Rights Watch report calling for the U.S. to halt executions of people with intellectual impairments.
Just back from Sweden for seminars on human rights and disability issues, Disability World staff member Lex Frieden reports that the government of South Africa has publicly confirmed its support for a UN Convention on Human Rights of People with Disabilities. The position paper, which will be published in full in the next issue of DW, asserts that the time has come for a more formalized mechanism that sets targets within prescribed periods and centralizes reporting and monitoring of progress.
Rights-based Legislation
Disability World reports in this issue include articles from Lebanon and Japan analyzing the process of rights-based legislation in those nations. Following a European Union resolution calling for anti-discrimination measures on behalf of people with disabilities in the areas of employment and higher education, both Germany and Holland have begun to draft national legislation. A group of Dutch members of Parliament and disability advocates visited Washington D.C. and New York in the first week of May to investigate effects of the Americans with Disabilities Act as part of these preparations.
Controversies
Two controversial articles in this issue of Disability World are a piece questioning whether a decade of World Health Organization sponsored initiatives to revise the International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps has produced anything useful; and a speech by a British disability leader challenging the style and substance of the disability rights movement in the United Kingdom.
Growing Up Alone
A new UNICEF study called Growing Up Alone, draws attention to the worsening situation of millions of children who are now in "triple jeopardy," impacted by wars and civil conflicts, poverty and HIV/AIDS. Released during the first week of May, (www.unicef.org) one of the leading findings of the report is that "approximately 2 million children have been killed by conflict over the last 10 years; 12 million have been made homeless and 6 million have been injured or disabled."
World Bank Responds
Responding to the building international pressure to find new approaches to the worldwide AIDS crises in poor countries, particularly in Africa, the World Bank has outlined a plan for a global fund to address prevention, care and treatment. In an opinion piece in Newsday on May 3 (www.newsday.com/coverage/current/editorial/wednesday/nd1582.htm) Bank President James D.Wolfensohn detailed the plan, noting the urgency of action. He concluded, "In too many countries, AIDS, sex, rape, violence against women, and condoms are rarely mentioned. In too many communities, men believe that sex with a virgin will cure them. The human tragedy surrounding that belief is staggering - in South Africa today, 95,000 children under the age of 15 are HIV-positive, most of them girls." A report in this issue of Disability World describes the use of newly developed female condoms in Southern African AIDS prevention programs.
Congratulations . . .
Are in order to Raymond Kurzweil who has received the $500,000 Lemelson-Massachusetts Institute of Technology prize in recognition of this 35 year track record of inventions. He is best known in the disability community for his 1976 invention of the first reading machine to give voice to written text. Kurzweil, presented with the prize on May 3 in Washington, D.C., said part of the funds would be donated to a foundation he has established to benefit blind students . . . Disability World got a lefthanded compliment recently when we discovered our proposal to the government for funding for this e-zine has ended up on a best-selling CD-Rom of the "15 top-ranked grant proposals" funded by the U.S. National Institute on Disability & Rehabilitation Research that year. We assume these CD-Roms, made possible by the Freedom of Information Act, are used in the same creative vein as for-profit repositories of term papers and dissertations.
Identity Crises on the Web
After 51,000 "hits," Paul Darke, a U.K. disability rights activist who ran a website devoted to criticism of the Leonard Cheshire charity (www.leonard-cheshire.com), has had to relinquish that domain name back to the charity. In early May the World Intellectual Property Organization ruled against Darke, who had been using the website as a "work of political interventionist art" against what he described as Cheshire's work to institutionalize disabled persons in its homes around the world. Full coverage appeared in the May 2 issue of the Guardian in "Wiped Out" by Helen Hague (www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4178799,00.html)
We Media, one of the earliest web-based U.S. disability portals, has announced its lawsuit against Women's Entertainment, a new television cable channel that calls itself WE for short. Unfortunately for WeMedia, the cable channel is owned by corporate giants General Electric and the National Broadcasting Company, among others, which have ample resources to counter the suit.
Disability History Corner
Deaf History International is a relatively new organization that held its 4th international conference 26-30 June 2000 at Gallaudet University. Nearly 250 participants, both deaf and hearing from 24 countries attended the meeting, organized around the theme, "Researching, Preserving and Teaching Deaf People's History."
According to an article about the conference by Prof. John Schuchman in the December 2000 issue of World Federation of the Deaf News, "Dissemination of historical record is taking place in many forms: traditional book publications about Deaf history, the creation of museums in, for example, Finland, France and New Zealand, and through the use of computer technology, for example on CD-Rom in Scandinavia and an online data project based in Japan and the USA." The DHI business meeting elected Odd-Inge Schroder of Norway as President and decided to hold the next conference in France in 2003. A newsletter is planned and details are available from its editor as follows: Lois.Bragg@gallaudet.edu
|
