A large number of her office's interventions this year concerned the “inalienable” right of children with disabilities to equal and non-discriminatory or exclusionary access to education and the educational process, the Commissioner for Administration and Protection of Human Rights, Maria Stylianou Lottidi, said on Saturday. in its installation, on the occasion of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.
Mrs. Lottidou, in her intervention, as the Independent Mechanism for the Promotion, Protection and Monitoring of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, states that the International Day of Persons with Disabilities was established in 1992 by a decision of the UN General Assembly and is celebrated every time on December 3, commemorating the adoption by the international organization, on December 3, 1982, of the Program of Action for Persons with Disabilities.
The latter, he adds, led to the signing of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on March 30 2007 which was ratified by the Republic of Cyprus in 2011, “and is a milestone in the historical path for the recognition, promotion and protection of rights of people with disabilities”.
With the Convention, he notes, “the medical approach to disability is definitively eliminated and its legal approach is now established, since it is recognized that disability is an integral part of human diversity and its treatment is not a question of a charitable approach but an issue that touches the core of human rights”.
The Commissioner states that the provisions of the Convention, the General Comments of the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in relation to the interpretation of specific articles of the Convention, as well as the Concluding Observations of the Committee regarding the First Report of Cyprus which were published in 2017, they are the primary tools of her Office when investigating complaints made regarding the rights of persons with disabilities, as well as in our ex officio interventions in matters affecting persons with disabilities.
It states that the majority of issues brought to the attention of its office for investigation concern the assurance of an adequate standard of living for persons with disabilities, the definition and assessment of disability for the purposes of access to social benefits, their equal and non-discriminatory access to education and on issues of accessibility to the natural and built environment and to information. exclusions access to education and the educational process, on the basis of what is detailed in Article 24 of the Convention and in the General Comments of the Committee on the matter”, it is added.
The Commissioner referred to the Ministry of Education's compliance with her office's interventions.
In particular, she referred to her relevant report in March 2022 regarding disability discrimination due to the refusal to provide reasonable accommodations to a student with a disability during the Pan-Cyprus Access Exams.
The relevant Ministry complied with its binding recommendation and during the All-Cypriot Examinations provided the particular student with a differentiated examination essay, based on his assessed and individualized educational needs, it is reported.
Elsewhere, in a September 2022 ex officio position of her office regarding the provision of chaperones to children with disabilities attending schools, “we reiterated the need to review the recruitment process for school chaperones, with the best interests of the child as the primary focus, as well as that chaperones, as a form of reasonable accommodation provided to children with disabilities, should be able to adequately respond to the individual needs of each child as determined by the Provincial Committees for Special Education and Education”.
While in a report in November 2022, regarding the failure to provide a student with a disability with a companion that meets their individual needs, “we pointed out that every case of a student with a disability requiring reasonable accommodations and, in particular, a school companion, should be considered and to be treated separately and individually and with a view to the particular needs that the requested reasonable adjustments should satisfy”.
When a student who is unable to care for himself and experiences multiple disabilities is not provided with a school chaperone who is able to meet his needs, but is given a reasonable accommodation on the same basis as the criteria considered for providing a chaperone to another child with a disability or learning developmental difficulties who obviously has fewer needs, “there is a gross violation of the principle of equality and there is discrimination against him as there is equal treatment of dissimilar cases which is expressly prohibited by Article 28 of the Constitution”, it states.
The Commissioner points out that, recently “we have been informed with satisfaction”, the relevant Ministry has initiated the implementation of her recommendation and is already taking steps to hire an escort who is able to respond to the multiple disabilities of the student referred to in this Report.< /p>
On the contrary, it is noted, the promotion of independent living, the recognition of legal capacity, accessibility, uniform/inclusive education, equal opportunities in the labor market and non-discriminatory participation in all aspects of social, economic and cultural life, should now be considered self-evident and out of the blue in order to remove the exclusions that people with disabilities inevitably experience and to end their marginalization.
In closing, the Commissioner states that , bearing in mind that, based on UN data, 15%, i.e. 1/7 of the world's population are people with disabilities, ” it is not clear” that our goal as a society is to remove all obstacles without exception, so that over one billion fellow human beings us not to be deprived of equal inclusion in society but to be able to enjoy their rights without discrimination.
