as an Independent Promotion Mechanism, Protection and Monitoring of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
The International Day of Persons with Disabilities was established in 1992 by a resolution of the UN General Assembly and is celebrated every year on 3 December, commemorating the adoption by the international organization of the Programme of Action for Persons with Disabilities on 3 December 1982.
The latter led to the signing of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on 30 March 2007 which was ratified by the Republic of Cyprus in 2011, and is a milestone in the historic journey for the recognition, promotion and protection of the rights of persons with disabilities. This is because the Convention is the first global international treaty that refers exclusively and entirely to persons with disabilities, enshrining in a binding manner, on the one hand, their rights and, on the other hand, the obligations of each State to respect these rights and to take the necessary measures to implement all the provisions of the Convention.
Furthermore, the Convention definitively eliminates the medical approach to disability and establishes a rights-based approach to disability, recognising that disability is an integral part of human diversity and that its treatment is not a matter of a charitable approach but a matter at the core of human rights.
Persons with disabilities are recognised equally and without discrimination as bearers of rights, which should in any case be respected, so that they can participate on an equal footing with other people in all aspects of life and enjoy, without any discrimination against them on account of their disability, all human rights without exception.
Both the Convention and its Optional Protocol were ratified by the Republic of Cyprus in 2011 and in 2012, the Council of Ministers entrusted, under Article 33 of the Convention, the Commissioner for Administration and Protection of Human Rights with the competence to act as the Independent Mechanism for the Promotion, Protection and Monitoring of the Application of the Convention in the Republic of Cyprus.
The provisions of the Convention, the General Comments of the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in relation to the interpretation of specific articles of the Convention, as well as the Concluding Observations of the Committee regarding the First Report of Cyprus published in 2017, constitute the main tools of our Office when investigating complaints submitted regarding the rights of persons with disabilities, as well as in the context of our ex officio interventions on issues concerning persons with disabilities.
Several cases brought before us or investigated on our own initiative are dealt with jointly and under the authority of the Commissioner as an equality and anti-discrimination body. Specifically, under the Combating Racial and Certain Other Discrimination (Commissioner) Act, discrimination against persons with disabilities is defined as direct or indirect discrimination against them, for the removal of which the Commissioner is given the power to intervene. Similarly, and under the same Act, the Commissioner is empowered to intervene where a violation of the provisions of the Persons with Disabilities Act and, in general, discriminatory treatment of persons with disabilities is established.
The majority of the issues brought to our attention for investigation relate to ensuring an adequate standard of living for persons with disabilities, the definition and assessment of disability for purposes of access to social benefits, equal and non-discriminatory access to education and issues of accessibility to the physical and built environment and information.
By way of illustration, this year, as in previous years, a large number of our interventions have addressed the unqualified right of children with disabilities to equal and non-discriminatory or inclusive access to education and the educational process, on the basis of what is detailed in Article 24 of the Convention and the Committee's General Comments on the subject.
In particular, in our relevant report in March 2022 regarding disability discrimination due to the refusal to provide reasonable adjustments to a student with a disability during the National Access Examinations, we noted that requiring disabled children to pass a common/standardised test as a condition for securing admission to school is indirect discrimination against them, in that it results in their direct or indirect exclusion and does not secure disabled people's rights to equality, non-discrimination and education.
The competent Ministry complied with our binding recommendation and during the Pancyprian Examinations provided this student with a differentiated examination essay based on his assessed and individualized educational needs.
Further, in our Ex-officio Placement in September 2022 regarding the provision of[/I] chaperones to children with disabilities attending schools, reiterated the need to review the recruitment process for school chaperones, with the best interests of the child as the primary consideration, as well as that chaperones, as a form of reasonable accommodation provided to children with disabilities, should be able to respond adequately to the individual needs of each child as determined by the Provincial Special Education Committees.
Finally, in our recent report in November 2022, regarding the failure to provide a student with a disability with an attendant to meet his or her individualized needs, we noted that any case of a student with a disability requiring reasonable accommodations and, in particular, a school chaperone, should be considered and addressed separately and on an individualized basis and in light of the unique needs that the requested reasonable accommodations should meet.
In particular, when a student who is unable to self-support and has multiple disabilities is not provided with a school chaperone who is able to meet his or her needs, but is given reasonable accommodation on the same basis as the criteria considered in providing a chaperone to another child with a disability or learning developmental disability who obviously has fewer needs, there is a flagrant breach of the principle of equality and discrimination against him in that there is similar treatment of dissimilar cases, which is expressly prohibited by Article 28 of the Constitution.
It should be noted that, as we were recently informed with satisfaction, the competent Ministry has taken steps to implement our recommendation and is already taking steps to recruit an escort who is able to respond to the multiple disabilities of the pupil concerned by this Report, i.e. to constitute a reasonable adjustment based on the pupil's individualised and assessed needs.
Invariably, the promotion of independent living, recognition of legal capacity, accessibility, inclusive/inclusive education, equal opportunities in the labour market and non-discriminatory participation in all aspects of society, economic and cultural life, should now be seen as self-evident and indispensable for removing the exclusions that people with disabilities inevitably experience and for ending their marginalisation.
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ndividual[/I][/I] an[/I][/I] an population[/I], it becomes clear that our goal as society is the removal of of all without exception of e broads, so that in addition to one billion of the fellow people mlet be deprived of equal inclusion in society but to be in position to a all m without discrimination the right mat them.
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