Shadow Reporting Speech
Activist Approach in the Global South, Focusing on Shadow Reporting
Statistics confirm that more than 80% of persons with disabilities live in developing countries with the majority in deplorable situations lacking mechanism to equally participate in society.
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities seeks to address this disparities and a genuine avenue for addressing the injustices that have prevailed far too long at the expense of users and survivors of psychiatry and other persons with disabilities.
It?s imperative that member states not only sign the Convention on the Rights of Person with Disabilities but also work towards implementing. The process of implementation involves broad consultations between the legislative arm of government and stakeholders.
Africa has an opportunity to create a model for the rest of the world only if we stand up and as David Oaks, Executive Director-MindFreedom International puts it? ?Question the globalization of western corporate mental health system to the rest of the world.?
We in Africa, as activist, we have to devise ways and means from within the user/survivor groups in the global south to apply pressure for full implementation of the CRPD.
Together we need to explore ways to fund civic education/forums on the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities which is key for the success of the CRPD especially in poor and developing countries.
Our support of civic education and grassroots forums about our rights, equal legal capacity being central will bring us closer to the true purpose of the UN Conventions on the rights of persons with disabilities.
The users and survivor?s movement must and should find alternative avenues to exert pressure on government by using existing UN processes that allow and accept input from the civil society, and to act on human rights abuses against person with disabilities; one such process is called shadow reporting.
Lastly, the users and survivors movements needs to explore ways to harness the power of web 2.0 technologies, It?s true that we?ve become a global village and campaigns/activism is not limited to our countries but to a wider grassroots audience.
Together we work together to dismantle piece by piece, legislation's that violate human rights and deny person?s with disabilities legal capacities regardless of the fact those rights already exist in existing international declarations and conventions such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
