• FIRE reports on the global human rights efforts of women with disabilities

• Interview with Anuradha Mohit, a Special Rapporteur on Disabilities for the National Human Rights Commission of India. In this interview with Laura Hershey, Ms. Mohit comments on the draft Convention, particularly its treatment of women with disabilities.

• Interview with Charlotte McClain, a human rights commissioner with the South African Human Rights Commission. In this interview with Laura Hershey, Ms.McClain comments on the importance of including women with disabilities issues in the Convention.

• Interview with Kim Mi Joo, Director of the Women With Disablities Arts and Culture Network of Seoul, Korea. As a leader and advocate for women with disablities, Ms. Kim has been the visionary driving force behind Article 15 (bis), which recognizes the specific circumstances, needs and rights of disabled women. She discusses her activism and creative activities, as well as the growth of the women with disabilities movement since the 1995 Beijing women's conference. 

• Interview with Dinah Radtke, Brigitte Faber, and Lydia la Rivière-Zijdel. In this interview, members of Disabled People's International and the women's caucus discuss their draft proposal. Dinah Radtke is chair of the Women's Committee of Disabled People's International, Brigitte Faber directs Germany's Nationwide Network of Lesbian Women and Girls with Disabilities, and serves on the Executive Board of the National Council of German Women's Organizations and Lydia la Rivière-Zijdel is a disability scientist from theNetherlands and is the current President of the European Women's Lobby.

• Interview with Janet Walsh and Erin Mahoney. Human Rights Watch, the largest international human rights organization based in the United States, has been lending technical expertise and recommendations during the drafting of the Convention. In this interview HRW's Women's Rights Division Director Janet Walsh and Associate Erin Mahoney discuss the evolution of the Convention, with particular attention to its treatment of gender issues, and the future of disability rights as a focus of concern for the human rights movement.

• Interview with Theresia Degener, she serves on the official German government delegation at the Ad Hoc Committee on the Disability Convention. She is an internationally known human rights attorney and author. This week, she was named by the Ad Hoc Committee Chair to be the facilitator to coordinate meetings on the inclusion of disabled women's issues in the Convention. In this interview with Laura Hershey, Degener discusses international human rights law as applied to women with disabilities, and comments on the process by which nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and states' delegations are working together to incorporate gender into the Convention.
  

 

Key links to more information: Campaign: Towards Visibility of Disabled Women in the UN Convention (in German, English and Spanish) http://www.un-disabledwomen.org/ Ad Hoc Committee on a Comprehensive and Integral International Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/enable/rights/adhoccom.htm Human Rights and Disability (from OHCHR, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights http://www.unhchr.ch/disability/index.htm "Towards Visibility of Women with Disabilities in the UN Convention," a discussion paper written by Dr. Sigrid Arnade and Sabine Häfner; edited and published by Disabled People's International .

Others may use all of part of these reports for redistribution but please give credit to Radio Feminista/Feminist International Radio Endeavour/FIRE. 

For more information, see FIRE’s Disabled Women's web space at: http://www.fire.or.cr/disabilities/notas/dis-home.htm or FIRE's home webpages in Spanish (www.radiofeminista.net) and English www.radiofeminista.net/indexeng.htm,  or write to oficina@radiofeminista.net.