'A World Enabled': fighting for the human rights of persons with disabilities.

• Author: Pineda, Victor

More than 600 million persons, almost 10 per cent of the world's population, have a disability. This number will rise dramatically in the coming years as the population ages and more people become disabled by HIV/AIDS. For this reason, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information Shashi Tharoor has stated that the development of the Comprehensive and Integral International Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities is one of the ten most important stories the world should hear more about. A World Enabled was established to directly respond to this challenge. As advocates with disabilities, it is not simply our responsibility to voice a call for human rights but also to share and implement the articles we have secured.

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In most countries, people with disabilities and their families are socially stigmatized, politically marginalized and economically disadvantaged. The United Nations Global Programme on Disability has stated: "Disability tends to be couched within a medical and welfare framework, identifying people with disabilities as ill, different from their non-disabled peers, and in need of care. Because the emphasis is on the medical needs of people with disabilities, there is a corresponding neglect of their wider social needs."

It is our belief that the media, coupled with local action, is essential to the implementation of the proposed treaty. In fact, a provocative feature-length documentary is already under way, which will document the lives of five disabled delegates from Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and North America by sharing their worlds. It will chronicle the personal struggles that led them to devote the rest of their lives to ensure that people with disabilities are no longer deprived of internationally recognized human rights, such as the right to live, freedom from torture and inhuman and degrading treatment, bodily and psychological integrity, liberty, equality, association, family/privacy, recognition as a person before the law, freedom of expression, to vote and stand for elections, citizenship, and recognition of people with disabilities as a minority.

Any new human rights document is only as effective as those organizations and Governments charged with ensuring that these rights are realized. For this reason, we are creating with our international partners "A World Enabled" (AWE), a new...