Oct 27,1999 International symposium
Bringing a Human Rights Framework to International Cooperation and Disability:
A Canadian Perspective
Diane Richler Executive Vice President, Canadian Association for Community Living
Introduction
The Canadian Association for Community Living
Canadian International Cooperation in the Field of Disability
CACL’s Recent Experiences in International Cooperation
The Challenges and Lessons Learned
Conclusion
In 1998, representatives of disability organizations accompanied the Prime Minister of Canada to the United Nations where Canada was presented with the Franklin Delano Roosevelt International Disability Award. The presence of the disability representatives recognized that progress in promoting the rights of persons with a disability both at home and abroad has been a collaborative effort between the government of Canada and the community.
For fifty years, voluntary organizations have been struggling to improve the place of persons with a disability in their communities, and for almost as long have been collaborating with organizations internationally.While the cumulative effect of these activities shows a clear pattern, most of the actions were taken independently, and it is only now, looking back in history, that the story of the contribution of Canadians to the international field of disability is beginning to emerge.
The Canadian Association for Community Living
One of the active players both domestically and internationally in promoting the rights of persons with a disability has been the Canadian Association for Community Living, CACL. CACL is a national advocacy organization working to promote the full participation of persons with an intellectual disability in all aspects of Canadian society. The association is a federation of associations from each of the ten provinces and two territories of Canada, which in turn are federations of approximately 400 local associations across the country. These local associations are made up of about 40,000 members which include persons who have an intellectual disability, their families and friends.
The association was founded at the national level in 1958. Local associations began to form in the late 1940's mostly by parents of sons and daughters who had an intellectual disability. They gathered together because their children were not being accepted into the local schools, and institutions were the only services available. Families started the first schools for children with an intellectual disability,often in church basements or living rooms of members’homes.
As the children of the first members grew up, the association began to develop sheltered workshops so that there would be something to do for those students who were completing school. In 1963, to reflect the recognition that those first served by the association were no longer children, the association changed its name from the Canadian Association for Retarded Children to the Canadian Association for the Mentally Retarded.
Through the 1970's and 1980's, the focus of the association was on developing a range of services in the community that would respond to all of a person’s needs from birth to death without need for institutions. There was a belief that if services were comprehensive and coordinated that people with an intellectual disability could live lives similar to those of their non-disabled peers.
Gradually, however, the association became disenchanted with the idea that simply developing more and more specialized services would be the answer.
These services were seen to segregate people with a disability from their families and communities, and furthermore, it was questionable that there would ever be enough money to fund such services for everyone who needed them. Another solution had to be found. At the same time, the growing disability rights movement initiated by persons with physical and sensory disabilities produced an increased recognition that persons with an intellectual disability also had rights, and that generic services in the community should be open to them.
The situation changed in 1982 when Canada developed a new Constitution that included a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Charter guarantees that:
“Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age, or mental or physical disability.”
The inclusion of disability in these equality rights provisions has had a major impact on Canadian law, policy, practice and attitude. For CACL, it meant bringing people who themselves had an intellectual disability into the organization, and giving them a strong voice. This led to another change in name for the association, to the Association for Community Living, signifying a change in focus. No longer was the mission of the association to try to “fix” people. Rather, it was to try to help communities to be inclusive. This meant starting to examine the barriers that were keeping people with intellectual disabilities from participating in all aspects of community life, and finding ways to eliminate those barriers.
While CACL is a grass roots organization, which conducts most of its activities in Canada, almost since its inception it has also been part of networks around the world. In the early 1960's,CACL helped to found the organization that is now known as Inclusion international, a federation of parents associations from over 150 countries.
Canadian International Cooperation in the Field of Disability
Since Canadian international cooperation in the field of disability has not been coordinated either between government and the community or even among community organizations, the picture painted here is very much from the perspective of CACL’s involvement. As an early member of Inclusion International CACL took advantage of international meetings and conferences to share information and to learn about trends in different parts of the world. In the 1960’s, CACL was largely influence by the Scandinavian countries and their emphasis on normalization of the lives of persons with an intellectual disability. In the 1970’s CACL began sharing technical expertise, much of it related to training professionals to work in the disability field, and with a special emphasis on the Caribbean region.
In 1980, the United Nations’ International year of the Disabled had a major impact on Canada. Domestically, the Obstacles Report of the Parliament of Canada marked a turning point. The report signaled an important shift in thinking away from an approach based on rehabilitation to one based on rights and self-determination. It also laid the basis of a new partnership between the government and organizations representing persons with a disability and their families.
Until that time the major voluntary associations active in the field of disability both at home and abroad had been service providing agencies. Collaboration by organizations of persons with a disability and their families in the formulation of the recommendations of the Obstacles report laid the groundwork for the equality provisions of the Charter and established a partnership between the government and community that has continued to grow.
In that same year, the World Council of Rehabilitation International met in Winnipeg, Manitoba. When they refused to agree to fifty per cent representation on their council by delegates who had a disability, those delegates met together and Disabled Peoples’ International (DPI) was born. The Canadian International Development Agency, CIDA, provided funds for DPI to hold their first meeting in Singapore the next year, where Canadian Henry Enns was elected Vice-Chair. Henry Enns was included in the Canadian delegation to the United Nations, which helped to set the direction of the World Program of Action and subsequently, the United Nations Decade of Disabled persons. DPI established an office in Winnipeg with Canadian government support the next year. In 1989, the headquarters of DPI moved from Stockholm to Winnipeg, and Henry Enns became Executive Director.
The strong presence of DPI in Canada helped to secure generous government financial support, which in turn had a major impact on developing a self-advocacy movement of people with a disability around the world. It also heightened interest in international activities by disability organizations in Canada. Several national disability organizations came together in 1992 to jointly organize an international gathering of persons with a disability.
Independence ’92 attracted approximately 3000 disability activists from over 120 countries. Several international federations held meetings in conjunction with Independence ’92 providing a rare opportunity for the leadership of organizations of people with different disabilities to meet and share ideas. In addition to DPI, there were meetings of Inclusion international, the World Blind Union, the World Federation of the Deaf, and the world federation of psychiatric survivors.
While support for international efforts was not coordinated, the government showed its commitment to disability issues in a number of ways. For example, the government of Canada hosted the first international meeting of Ministers responsible for disability issues in 1992 and included representatives of the disability movement in delegations to:
- the United Nations International Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993);
- the World Social Summit (1994);
- the Fourth World Conference of Women (Beijing, 1995); and
- the United Nations Habitat Conference, (1996).
Despite these commitments and funding of individual projects of disability organizations, disability is not a recognized priority of CIDA. It is, however, consistent with several CIDA priorities, in particular the promotion of human rights, democracy and good governance and gender equity.
One of the Canadian government’s best known international examples which touches on disability is the recent Ottawa process which resulted in the convention to ban anti-personnel land mines. The signing in December 1997 was the first time that a major international treaty had been negotiated without leadership by a super-power and involving non-government organizations as key players.
The Ottawa process set a precedent in international diplomacy. Through the collaborative process the role and definition of experts was acknowledged to be far greater than and extend beyond government. National and international NGO’s were viewed as highly influential in convincing governments to join the ban movement and sign the convention. On the other hand, government officials were most often cited as obstacles to signing. An analysis to determine the lessons learned from the process concluded the following.
Partnership pays.
The activities of the NGO’s and NGO/government collaboration were seen to be crucial to the success of the Ottawa process. This collaboration extended to the sharing of classified information and commitment to joint strategies in pursuit of a common goal.。
Keep the message clear.
It was important to have a clear, relatively non-negotiable, humanitarian message.
A cross regional group core group provides legitimacy and functionality.
The core group illustrated a broad base of concern and commitment. It also facilitated the development of a clear message.
The Ottawa process model may be useful in other contexts.
Governments appear to be more skeptical than others that the model could be repeated for dealing with other issues. One contributing factor to the success of the Ottawa process was the long period of cultivating public awareness that preceded the process.
There is much to be learned from the Ottawa process about the benefits of government-voluntary sector collaboration and about coalition building on a regional and even worldwide basis. However, it is important to remember that while the government of Canada played a lead role in arriving at a convention and in convincing many governments to sign it, the original leadership to ban anti-personnel mines came not from any government but from concerned citizens.
This was recognized when the Nobel peace prize was presented to the coalition of civil society organizations that spearheaded the campaign. Certainly the government of Canada and the others who collaborated on the core group are to be commended for their willingness to collaborate with citizens in radically new ways, often ignoring the age-old rules of diplomacy. But the true heroes of the Ottawa process were the citizens of the world, who, without any formal structure, with few resources, but with a clear and common goal changed the world.
CACL’s Recent Experiences in International Cooperation
CACL has been a relatively small player on the international scene in terms of the both the resources deployed and the number of people involved. However, in recent years there has been a clear, consistent focus to CACL’s international activities in order to try to maximize the benefits and to link agendas at home and abroad.
The turning point in CACL’s international efforts came in 1991 when the association participated in the founding meeting of the Inter-American federation of Inclusion International, known by the acronym CILPEDIM. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms was still relatively new, and Canadians were struggling to understand what it would mean to truly begin to address disability as a matter of citizenship. In Latin America, several countries had recently emerged from a long period of dictatorship or military rule, and CACL’s sister organizations were grappling with the place of persons with a disability in emerging democracies. Both CACL and the organizations form the south immediately had a common understanding and saw the parallels in their respective countries.
Progress was rapid because of CACL’s good fortune in quickly securing funding which helped the members of CILPEDIM to solidify their bonds and engage in joint actions. The Canadian government had created a fund to promote the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child by funding Canadian voluntary organizations to work in collaboration with similar voluntary organizations in other countries. It is worth noting that this strategy was designed to both promote the United Convention and to strengthen civil society organizations in Canada and abroad at the same time.
The CACL project, Partnerships in Community Living, was funded from 1993-96, in order to promote the inclusion of children with a disability throughout the Americas through a process of increased collaboration between disability organizations, professionals and government. One hundred and fifty representatives from each of those sectors from 34 countries in the Americas met in Nicaragua to develop a framework for the project. Their accord was embodied in the Declaration of Managua, signed December 3, 1993. The Declaration of Managua states:
“To ensure social well-being for all people, societies have to be based on justice, equality, equity, inclusion and interdependence, and recognize and accept diversity. Societies must also consider their members, above all, as persons, and assure their dignity, rights, self-determination, full access to social resources and the opportunity to contribute to community life.”
The Declaration of Managua, and its focus on disability as a matter of human rights then became the framework for project activities in the areas of research, information dissemination, and community development. A series of regional workshops were held involving greater numbers of people in the process, and building capacity for approaching disability as a matter of human rights.
As experience was gained throughout the Americas, it became clear that often, forces from far beyond that country’s border were driving social policy. In particular, the role of international financial institutions and international development were identified as major cause of the exclusion of children with a disability. Often, this was not a deliberate objective, but rather was a side effect of policies that did not take into consideration the rights of children with a disability.
For example, at that time, the World Bank was a major investor in educational reform in Latin America, and one of their priorities was education of the girl child. In focusing on gender issues, the bank had ignored the fact that many girls have a disability. As a result, schools continued to be built that would not be physically accessible to girls with a disability, teachers were not prepared to teach girls with a disability, and parents were not encourages to provide an education for girls with a disability.
Recognizing the huge impact of international organizations and agencies on the exclusion of children and adults with a disability, CILPEDIM set itself an objective of influencing both regional and global policies to embrace a human rights framework for disability.
Building on the wide consensus that had developed the Declaration of Managua, CILPEDIM set priorities among the various regional institutions and went into action. The government of Canada provided some modest support to CACL to assist in these activities. The first target was the Inter-American Development Bank, which, after a two-year process of negotiation, contracted with CACL to conduct a study on promoting labour market participation of persons with a disability in Central America. It should be noted that trust funds of the government of Canada at the Bank funded this study.
The contract with the Inter-American Development Bank produced a wealth of information about how the Bank and other important donors in the region could use existing funds in ways that would promote more participation by persons with a disability. The contract culminated in a seminar at the Bank that was inaugurated by the present of the Bank and the president of the CIDA. While the study did not result in an immediate improvement in the rate of labour market participation by persons with a disability, it did a lot to legitimize disability as an emerging social issue at the Bank, and established credibility for both CACL and CILPEDIM.
In order to receive approval for the Bank project, CACL and CILPEDIM had secured endorsement for the Declaration of Managua from the Parliament of Central America and from the Forum of the Presidents of the National Assemblies of Central America. Most recently, the Declaration was cited in the Convention to Eliminate Discrimination Against Persons with a Disability adopted by the Organization of American States (OAS). The Declaration is included in the Convention in a list of international accords such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is the only reference cited which is not an inter-governmental accord and which is a creation of civil society. As such, it is being heralded within the OAS as an example of the valuable contributions of civil society.
Since the end of the funding for Partnerships in Community Living in 1996 CACL has had small projects in Central America funded through CIDA. These projects have focused on promoting the citizenship of persons with a disability. They have emphasized strengthening civil society organizations; promoting inclusive public policy, especially inclusive education; and promoting citizen participation though the electoral process and the promotion of civil society participation in the formulation of public policy. Partnerships have been established with the regional organization of chief Electoral Officers, with universities, and with networks of physicians and youth.
The Challenges and Lessons Learned
Certainly there have been challenges in carrying out the international activities of CACL over the past decade, but there have also been incredible lessons learned. Each challenge has provoked a response, and these responses have helped CACL to better analyze the nature and value of its work.
Challenge 1:
Why is CACL addressing international issues instead of solving problems in Canada?
CACL is a domestic organization, formed to address issues within Canada. For both its members and funders it is sometimes difficult to understand the value of engaging in activities beyond Canada’s borders, especially when there is so much to be done at home. Participation by both staff and volunteers in international travel is perceived to be taking time away from domestic priorities.
Response:
International activities have taught CACL a lot about global trends and helped the association to better understand social, political and economic trends in Canada. Since starting to work with international agencies, CACL is better prepared to deal with federal government policies which are often influenced by trends in other countries, and pressures from multi-lateral institutions. For example, the debates about the role of civil society to which CACL was first exposed through the Inter-American Development Bank prepared the association for subsequent debates within Canada about citizen participation and the role of the voluntary sector.
Challenge 2:
How can CACL apply a human rights framework to its actions?
Promoting a human rights framework for disability within the Americas led CACL to engage in dialogue with its sister organizations with a high standard for democratization of decision-making. CACL could not on the one hand promote the concept of self-determination for persons with a disability and then enter relationships where one partner had control. Similarly, if CACL was suggesting that in order to address the challenges of persons with a disability a coherent approach was required which would acknowledge rights as indivisible, then the association had to similarly respect the rights of minorities and other disadvantaged groups in its work. Finally, CACL had to constantly interact with individuals and organizations which refused to accept the framework of disability as a human rights issue, and the association was repeatedly tested to make the case.
Response:
In order to assure the self-determination of its sister organizations, CACL has made a commitment to work in collaboration with them, and to share responsibility for decision-making. This has often made management cumbersome, but CACL will not undertake work unless it has been jointly planned with its partners, and in most cases, jointly managed as well. CACL has worked hard to include diversity within its leadership, and this has often led to tension when values and politics create divisions. However, CACL has tried to keep its principles clear, and to limit collaboration to activities where there is a shared objective. Working with such a diversity of interests has helped CACL to find points of consensus upon which to build.
Challenge 3:
How can CACL partner with associations that have very weak infrastructure and little or no resources?
Many of CACL’s sister organizations are very young. They have no staff, usually no office, and few resources. Volunteer leaders often have more that one job, and are dealing with difficult living conditions in addition to the challenges of their child’s disability.
Response:
As much as possible CACL has tried to build up the capacity of its sister organizations in everything it does. In the contract for the Inter-American Development Bank, one of the consultants hired in each country came from the parents’ association. This served as an in-depth education about the conditions in their own countries as well as in the region, and provided a real example of using a human rights framework as a basis of analysis. Similarly, the local associations are used as agents to carry out various aspects of CACL’s projects which both helps to build capacity and provides much needed resources. CACL always tries to expand the possibilities for its sister organizations to build on its projects by securing local funding for complementary initiatives.
Challenge 4:
How can CACL convince the government of Canada to increase support for disability and human rights?
While Canada has shown leadership in supporting disability organizations and promoting the rights of person with a disability on the international scene, the efforts have heretofore been sporadic and limited. As CACL learned more about the shaping of policies and programs within the international financial and other multi-lateral institutions, the association saw that there could be enormous benefits to a greater Canadian government commitment to human rights and disability, both at home and abroad. CACL believed that a coherent foreign policy in which aid, trade, and diplomacy all converged to support the human rights of persons with a disability would have a significant impact for its sister organizations as well as for Canadians.
Response:
Initially, CACL’s goals were modest. The association learned that the if it wanted support from the Inter-American Development Bank, the Canadian director’s office there could be helpful, not only in shepherding the project through the system and securing funding, but also in beginning to insert the issue of disability in other policy discussions. However, CACL also realized that some of the policy direction still came from Ottawa, and that it would be important to have both the Department of Foreign Affairs and CIDA on side for major changes to happen.
CACL began to study where and how policies were made affecting spending priorities and tried to influence those processes. The association learned that the Inter-American Development Bank was convening a meeting of all the government and donors of Central America in the wake of Hurricane Mitch. The association then worked within the region to assure that the requests going forward from civil society insisted that people with a disability be considered in reconstruction efforts. CACL also worked with donor governments, notably Canada and Sweden to ensure that they listed persons with a disability as a priority for their investments.
CACL saw that trade with Latin America was becoming a higher priority with the Canadian government, so the association suggested that the contract with the Inter-American Development Bank was a sign that Canadians had an expertise that could be marketed. This led to an invitation to participate in a Canadian trade mission to Latin America, led by the Prime Minister, which delivered a message that disability was important to the government. CACL could then use that message to reinforce to domestic government departments the high priority of persons with a disability.
In order to bring various messages together, CACL secured minimal funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs to prepare a discussion paper for the Department entitled Disability in Canadian Foreign Policy: A Human Rights Strategy. The paper links human rights and disability to Canadian government foreign policy priorities of promoting prosperity and employment; contributing to Canada’s security in a stable global framework; and promoting human rights. The paper also recommends a coherent approach to disability in the areas of aid, trade and diplomacy as well as coherence of foreign and domestic policy.
As CACL has struggled in its international activities, the rationale for involvement has become clearer. Several specific objectives have emerged.
Through international development work, CACL seeks to:
- Join in solidarity with families of persons with a disability in other countries;
- Learn from experiences elsewhere and apply the lessons in Canada;
- Share lessons learned in Canada with others;
- Assure that Canada’s international development funds contribute to the well-being of persons with a disability and their families;
- Ensure that Canada’s foreign policy supports the human rights and well-being of persons with a disability abroad; and
- Influence domestic policy by setting a standard for leadership.
Increasingly, governments, multi-lateral institutions, civil society, and the private sector are recognizing that as long as some groups are marginalized, both socially and economically, the result is social unrest. Conversely, social inclusion and strong civil society create conditions for stable and lasting peace where economies can flourish. Equality and human rights are being recognized as prerequisites of social cohesion.
In his recent address to the Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund, World Bank President Wolfensohn touched on several of the themes which CACL has explored in its international work: the need to link social and structural reform; the need to foster partnership between government, multi-lateral institutions and civil society; the need to give respect, dignity and a voice in decision-making to people who are poor and marginalized. Significantly, in closing his remarks, Mr. Wolfensohn included reference to persons with a disability as among the world’s most vulnerable.
Acknowledgement by the World Bank, by the Inter-American Development Bank, by the Organization of American States of the need to give people with a disability their rightful place as citizens of the world encourages CACL to push forward with its international agenda. Perhaps the activities that began with a narrow, charity based focus to provide assistance to countries in need can now contribute to a global effort to establish long-lasting peace and security, respecting the human rights and equality of all citizens of the world.。