UK austerity has devastated disabled people says UN

A UN Committee has issued a damning report stating that the UK government is failing to uphold disabled people’s rights across a range of areas from education, work and housing to health, transport and social security.

The UN committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities examined the government’s progress in fulfilling its commitments to the UN convention on disabled people’s rights, to which the UK has been a signatory since 2007.

Its report concludes that the UK has not done enough to ensure the convention is reflected in UK law and policy with the chairwoman of the UN committee Theresia Degener describing it as a “human catastrophe”. Stig Langvad, the CRPD’s rapporteur for the UK, also said he was “deeply concerned” about the Government’s failure to act on the committee’s previous report in 2016.

The UK Delegation of Disabled People’s Organisations has issued the following joint statement:

“Today the UN(CRPD) Committee has, once again, condemned the UK Government’s record on Disabled People’s human rights. They have validated the desperation, frustration and outrage experienced by Disabled people since austerity and welfare cuts began. It is no longer acceptable for the UK Government to ignore the strong and united message of the disability community.

UK Government representatives committed during the review to rethinking the way they support Disabled people to monitor our rights. We welcome this commitment. However, we are clear that our involvement must be genuine and inclusive and that we cannot accept anything less than progress on delivering the human rights enshrined in the Convention, and denied us for too long.’

Read more here: https://dpac.uk.net/2017/08/

Read the Committee’s concluding observations here: http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=CRPD/C/GBR/CO/1&Lang=En

 

 

 

Image credit: sanjitbakshi, CC 2.0 Flickr