As well as, and completely separate to DPAC’s complaint to the UN Committee for Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD) there is a thing called the Periodic Reporting Cycle. That means every few years each government that has signed the UN Treaty on Persons with Disabilities (which the UK has done) has to give a report to the UN Committee on how well it is complying with the Treaty.
So to cut a long story short, EHRC and DRUK etc publish their submissions to the UN – and we at DPAC get to look at them – which is when the wheels start to fall off this establishment bandwagon.
(see:
- https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/un-report-failure-on-benefit-deaths-by-national-dpos-is-extreme-insult-to-activists/
- https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/national-dpos-forced-to-withdraw-report-sent-to-un-over-benefit-deaths-evidence/
- https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/watchdog-refuses-to-withdraw-report-to-un-that-omits-benefit-deaths-evidence/
)
So the upshot of all this is that DPAC along with our allies Inclusion London and Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (RoFA) went ahead and wrote our own Independent Shadow Report – we had no invite from the government to do this and we certainly got no money from the government for it, but we wanted this job done properly.
Its important that the UN Committee gets to see an un-varnished, full, detailed account of the effects of UK government attacked on disabled people. And we had no confidence that the semi-official bodies were willing or even able to produce one.
So our small team of researchers and writers at DPAC, Inclusion London and Rofa got together and we did our own.
It has already been submitted to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and this week, on Monday, representatives from DPAC, IL and Rofa will be joining the EHRC and Druk representatives in the UN in Geneva to present our reports to the committee.
You can see the DPAC/IL/RoFA submissions to the committee here:
- UNCRPD Shadow Report 2017 (Doc)
- List of Issues related to the implementation of the UNCRPD in England (2017) (Doc)
I just read that the dwp have “Told medical assessors for pip. to disregard the criteria that causes claiments with Mental health issues, who are unable to go out of their home due to severe anxiety. They are not to be treated the same as claiments with physical disabilities~”. (Source, The independent). If that is not discrimination? Can someone please tell me what is? I sincerely hope that dpac and other groups include this in their Shadow report to the un. I am 100% disgusted with this government and it’s attitude towards those with Mental health issues. This is outright discrimination, nothing less. I know the dpac are looking for claiments in this situation and I hope they can take these evil, evil sociopaths as far as they can possibly go. This government have abused legislation and discriminated against those with Mental health issues. This is the first step and there will be more. No longer will winning an appeal in the uk’s highest court matter. The government will simply change the law. I hope that they can’t get away with this. This is very wrong and can only lead to further discrimination of the disabled in the uk.
Thank you all for your works and commitment to the issues that affect us as disabled people. Good luck in Geneva and many blessings to you all.
A minor correction to your piece. You refer to the Periodic Reporting Cycle when you mean the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which is a unique process which involves a periodic review of the human rights records of all 193 UN Member States. The UPR is a significant innovation of the Human Rights Council which is based on equal treatment for all countries.