On Dec. 4, Bob Dole (R-Kan.) — World War II veteran, former senator from Kansas, former Republican Party nominee for president and former Senate Republican leader — sat in his wheelchair on the Senate floor. He watched his onetime political rival, former Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), give an impassioned, stirring speech about the treaty Dole came to Washington to lobby for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
The treaty itself would not have changed much in the United States. The existing Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) extends most of the proposed protections the treaty would have required. The only new requirements would have been regular reporting on the status of the disabled in the nation and on areas that need improvement toward the fair access and engagement of the disabled in everyday life and the establishment of a recommendation committee.
The real significance of the treaty was symbolic. It would have represented a new commitment from the United States toward improving the livelihood, educational opportunities and employment of those that are disabled. It would be a tangible step away from infantilization — the de facto posture society and the government imposes on those that bear a handicap.
The treaty, modeled after the Americans with Disabilities Act, would help to extend disability protection to all United Nations (U.N.) signatories. While the treaty would have affected little in the U.S., it would have been a major innovation to many other parts of the world.
The treaty failed, 61 to 38. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) promised that the treaty will be reconsidered in this Congress. “It is a sad day when we cannot pass a treaty that simply brings the world up to the American standard for protecting people with disabilities because the Republican Party is in thrall to extremists and ideologues,” he said in a statement.
The state of the disabled
The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) defined disability as the umbrella classification for all impairments that cause activity limitations and participation restrictions. Disability does not refer to the individual, but the interactions of an individual afflicted with a health condition (e.g. severe injury, Down syndrome, depression, blindness, etc.) and personal and environmental factors (e.g. building access, limited social supports, inadequate human interaction interfaces — keyboards, switches without Braille translation, etc. — negative societal attitudes, etc.).
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 15 percent of the world’s population — over a billion individuals — suffer from some form of disability. Of these, between 110 million and 190 million are significantly incapable of functioning normally. In areas where there is limited access to health care and among the aging, the rate is growing.
The health care shortage is particularly troubling. A recent survey of individuals with severe mental disorders showed that between 35 and 50 percent of the disabled in developed countries and between 76 and 85 percent of those in developing countries received no treatment whatsoever for the year of the survey.
The recent gun control debate centers around improving screening efforts and treatment availability for the mentally impaired. It is a common gun rights argument that servicing the mental disability community will reduce the gun violence in America.
Health promotions and organized prevention activities seldom target the disabled. Women with disabilities are less likely to be screened for breast and cervical cancer, people with intellectual impairments and diabetes are less likely to have their weight monitored, and adolescents with disabilities are more likely to be excluded from sex education than non-disabled individuals, according to the WHO.
Despite assurances made by the ADA, the realities of everyday existence for those with disabilities in America are stirring. As of January 2013 — according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) — the civilian labor force for 16-years-old or older that have no disability was 148,844,000. Of that number, 136,480,000 were employed, for a employment-population ratio of 63.2 percent and a participation rate of 68.9 percent. 67,245,000 individuals are not working and not currently looking for work.
Among those that have a disability, in January 2013, the civilian labor force was 28,573,000. Of this number, 5,134,000 were employed, for an employment-population ratio of 18 percent and a participation rate of 20.8 percent. 22,623,000 disabled individuals are not working and not currently looking for work.
Roughly one in every six individuals with a disability is employed in the United States. This is despite 85 to 90 percent of the disabled population having enough functionality to be individually productive.
As stated in the WHO’s “World Report on Disability:” “Misconceptions about the ability of people with disabilities to perform jobs are an important reason both for their continued unemployment and – if employed – for their exclusion from opportunities for promotion in their careers. Such attitudes may stem from prejudice or from the belief that people with disabilities are less productive than their non-disabled counterparts. In particular, there may be ignorance or prejudice about mental health difficulties and about adjustments to work arrangements that can facilitate employment.”
Misguided politics
Republican opposition to the United Nation Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities rose from distrust of the U.N.’s intentions, as many analysts have argued. In 2011, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) told The Hill in regards to funding the U.N.’s Human Rights Council, “I’d like to make sure that we once and for all kill all U.S. funding for that beast. Because I don’t think that it advances U.S. interests, I don’t think that that’s a pro-democracy group, it’s a rogues’ gallery, pariah states; they belong there because they don’t want to be sanctioned.”
In a town hall meeting last month, Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.), the Republican Policy Committee Chairman, stated — in response to a question: “The U.N. had a set purpose in its earliest days of trying to form relationships, but it has far left that. Our technology has far exceeded the purpose of what we have in the U.N. The ‘benefits’ of what we could get out of the U.N. we can do with a telephone now and over a Skype […] It is a transition of wealth from wealthy nations to poorer nations is what the U.N.’s sole purpose is now. I would be glad to defund it and do our relationships in another way.”
Despite the public’s overwhelming feelings that the United States’ relationship with the U.N. is beneficial and should be strong, Republican leadership feels equally as strongly that the U.S. should separate itself from the U.N. In 2012, the Republican National Committee developed a position plank against the U.N. The 54-page platform position states that “we strongly reject the U.N. Agenda 21 as erosive of American sovereignty.”
The aforementioned Agenda 21 is a non-binding voluntary action plan from the United Nation Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) that was signed by the administration of George H. W. Bush. Agenda 21 focuses on sustainable development, or the mode of development in which environmental concerns are given enough weight to ensure their preservation throughout future generations.
While Agenda 21 is not a treaty and is not actable as law, as more than 528 cities are members of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) and as the movement gains speed, the Republicans have decided to voice their opposition to the proposal on the grounds of property rights. Alabama has moved to block its local governments from becoming involved with ICLEI.
The Republicans’ distrust of the U.N. can be traced to isolationism, a traditional conservative political motive throughout this nation’s history. It can also be argued that conservatives dislike being told what to do. From the Washington Post: “The 2012 Republican Party platform, for instance, declares that the GOP ‘shall reject agreements whose long-range impact on the American family is ominous or unclear.’ Treaties singled out include the U.N. Convention on Women’s Rights (clearly a dangerously lesbian document); the Convention on the Rights of the Child (a ploy to snatch American children away from their parents); the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty (no doubt a prelude to ‘full-scale gun confiscation’); basically anything from the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development (tree-hugging); and the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities (dastardly intentions detailed above).”
A right to dignity
However, it may be something else that drove the Republicans’ ire with the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities. Many conservatives argue that the language in Article 4 — which refers to economic, social and cultural rights — conflicts with the way the Constitution defines rights. The offending clause, “take measures to the maximum of its available resources … with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of these rights,” suggests that the government must grant rights to an individual, instead of direct the government in what it cannot do to its citizens, argues the National Review.
This argument is not only wrong, but inherently dangerous. While the Constitution framers’ intentions were to ensure that the individual has complete and unrestricted access to his civil liberties, history has shown that rights not specifically expressed by law are ignored or infringed upon. The assumption that the government should do something is no guarantee that it will do something.
The treaty died in a hail of misinformation and scare tactics. Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) — the one-time presidential candidate — appeared prior to the Convention vote with his disabled daughter to solicit support against the treaty. Santorum wrote, “In the case of our 4-year-old daughter, Bella, who has Trisomy 18, a condition that the medical literature says is ‘incompatible with life,’ would her ‘best interest’ be that she be allowed to die? Some would undoubtedly say so.” Such an argument was baseless, as the treaty had no weight to influence existing law.
Michael Farris, a homeschooling activist that was influential in Republican arguments during the treaty debate, told Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in an interview, “They’re called living documents, just like the disgraced living Constitution theory, which means the treaty doesn’t mean today what it’s going to mean tomorrow what it’s going to mean ten years from now. So you never know what you’re signing up for, that by itself is a good enough reason to leave it alone and to never enter into one of these things.”
He continues: “…the definition of disability is not defined in the treaty. My kid wears glasses, now they’re disabled, now the U.N. gets control over them; my child’s got a mild case of ADHD, now you’re under control of the U.N. treaty. There’s no definitional standard, it can change over time, and the U.N., not American policymakers, are the ones who get it decided.”
The question ultimately is if a population’s right to live an ordinary life is worth another group’s discomfort. Duane French, division director of the state of Washington’s disability determination services department told Al Jazeera, “There are long held prejudices against people with disabilities that keep us from being full participants and equal contributors to our communities, and that prevent us from being as successful as we should and could be.”
“People without disabilities fear that could be them [with a disability], and that fear elicits a visceral response,” French continued. “And from that emanates a sense of helplessness and powerlessness … they think: ‘Oh, if I were like that I couldn’t stand looking different, relying on someone else for help, I couldn’t stand being treated differently, or not being in control of my behaviours like people with psychiatric disabilities.’ What’s funny about that is it’s based on a premise of arrogance that somehow people without disabilities don’t look and act in ways that are outside of the norm, because plenty of folks without disabilities look and act outside the norm.”
The question is do the disabled have the right to live a normal life? If they do, shouldn’t the government guarantee this right?
While it is unclear if the Republicans’ response was a knee-jerk reaction, one thing is known to be true. Colin O’Donohoe, an orchestra conductor and television composer who happened to be legally blind for the last 10 years, told Mint Press, “It has taken me quite a while to realize that my disability doesn’t define me. Although I have lost sight I have gained great vision. I have certainly noticed that when people learn of my disability they treat me differently and I hate that. I feel people are well intentioned but don’t realize that disabled people want to be treated normally.”