To: The President
From : Benny S Palime - Director
OSDP
Date: 27 February 2007
Subject: Explanatory Memorandum
Dear
Mr. President
The present
explanatory memorandum serves to describe the purpose of the Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol and to express
the intention of the South African Government to sign these two international
agreements.
Background:
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities marks the culmination
of nearly two decades of work preparing an international instrument to protect
and promote the rights of persons with disabilities and a major shift in the
way the world treats its 650 million disabled people.
The Convention and the Optional Protocol to the Convention were adopted, by
acclamation in terms of resolution AlRES/61/106, during the 61 Session of the
UN General Assembly on
The Convention and the Optional Protocol to the Convention will be opened for
signature at the United Nations Headquarters in
Convention on the Rights of Persons
with Disabilities:
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities reaffirms the
universal commitment to the rights and dignity of all people without
discrimination.
Under the
Convention, States parties would guarantee that persons with disabilities enjoy all human rights on
an equal basis
with others including their inherent right to life, the equal rights and
advancement of women and girls with disabilities and protect children with
disabilities. States parties would ensure the equal right to own and inherit
property, access to justice on an equal basis with others, the right to liberty
and security, freedom from torture, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment and prohibits medical or scientific experiments without
the consent on the person concerned and promote the physical and psychological recovery,
rehabilitation and reintegration of the victim and investigate abuse.
The Convention makes provision for
persons with disabilities not to be subjected to arbitrary or illegal inference
with their privacy, family, home, correspondence or communication (Ensures the
fundamental issue of accessibility, the promotion of the right to adequate standard of living and social protection, including
public housing, services and assistance for disability related needs and
assistance with disability related expenses in case of poverty). Discrimination
relating to marriage, family, and personal relations should be eliminated, and
States would ensure equal access to education, vocational training, and people
with disabilities would have the right to the highest attainable standard of
health without discrimination on the basis of disability.
The Convention makes provision, for a Committee to monitor the implementation
of the Convention in line with the provisions of other Human Rights Treaties.
Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities:
The Optional Protocol to the
Convention provides for an individual complains mechanism in which a State
Party to the present Protocol recognizes the competence of the Committee on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities to receive and consider communications from
or on behalf of individuals or groups of individuals subject to its
jurisdiction, who claim to be victims of a violation, by that State Party, of
the provisions of the Convention.
The signing of both the Convention and the Optional Protocol will ensure that its
implementation and the monitoring thereof by the Committee are enhanced. The
Committee will consider a communication if it concerns a State Party to the
Convention and to the present Protocol, and only after all available domestic
remedies have been exhausted.
Originally the Optional Protocol was intended to be part of the Convention,
however, although the two treaties were separated, they are both aimed at
advancing the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities in a mutually
reinforcing manner.
Thank you.
...........................
Bennet