UN Agrees on Disability Treaty

[Traveling_Home]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/5274354.stm

An international treaty that will give greater rights and freedoms to disabled people around the world has been agreed at the United Nations.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was adopted in New York.

This is the first human rights treaty of the 21st Century, and the UN hopes it will mark a significant improvement in the treatment of disabled people.

The world's disabled population is estimated to be 650 million.

T

[Monkeyman]

1. shhh don't tell Congress they will cut programs

oh ya they are

[grilled onions]

2. Who Will Inform The Insurance Industry?

How many in this country,alone, feel like they have no country on their side? They fight red tape at every turn. They can't afford treatments,doctors,meds. They are often treated like second class citizens who are "dragging" the healthy people down,crippling profits in the insurance industry. Some complainslow down the war effort because once inawhile war bucks have to be channeled into disability accounts. But as long as its on paper that treatment will be improved I guess we have nothing to worry about.:sarcasm:

[Kickoutthejams23]

3. 650 million?

Thats less than one in ten. Must be a pretty broad definition of disabled. :think:

[Traveling_Home]

4. Census Numbers

It does seem high so I went to census.gov and looked for US. Roughly speaking the population of U.S. is 300,000,000, number of disabled is 54,000,000, number of severely disabled is 27,000,0000

Makes the 1 in 10 that you speak of seem reasonable. I didn't look for definitions - I'm sure they're available at the census site if interested.

T

[hashibabba]

5. I'd be interested to know what other countries

treat their disabled better than the U.S. Probably quite a few, at this point.

[Traveling_Home]

6. If you want

If you want to define what you mean by treat better I'll see what I can find. I have access to a fair amount of statistical info.


Some examples could be

Public Transportation
Accessible sidewalks
Phone Access for Deaf
Voting participation

Lots of ways of looking at it

We generally don't take disabled kids out to the woods to die because they're born with defects like some countries but there have been many reports showing fetuses with downs syndrome are aborted at a very high rate. Are these the same or are we ahead because we don't birth them and then leave them to die? I don't know - you tell me the measure ya want to compare for better.

Probably lots of folks here could help dig for the comparisons you're intersted in

T