High level meeting of the General Assembly on disability and development – 23rd September 2013
The United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on the 13th December 2006. Ireland signed up to the Convention on the 30th March 2007 and is currently preparing to ratify the Convention.
The Convention follows decades of work by the United Nations to change attitudes and approaches to persons with disabilities. It takes to a new height the movement from viewing persons with disabilities as "objects" of charity, medical treatment and social protection towards viewing persons with disabilities as "subjects" with rights, who are capable of claiming those rights and making decisions for their lives based on their free and informed consent as well as being active members of society.
The United Nations recognises that “Greater efforts are needed to ensure that development processes include persons with disabilities to help realise the overall objective of the full and equal participation of persons with disabilities in society”.
In 2011, the General Assembly adopted resolution 66/124 and decided to convene a one-day high-level meeting of the General Assembly on disability (HLMD) at the level of Heads of State and Government on 23 September 2013, the Monday before the start of the general debate of the sixty-eighth session. The theme of this one day HLMD is “The way forward: a disability inclusive development agenda towards 2015 and beyond”.
The main outcome of this important meeting is an action-oriented Outcome Document in support of the aims of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals and other internationally agreed development goals for persons with disabilities.
Further information on this important one-day high-level meeting is available here.
