"Ensuring Rights in Development"
In July of 2010, disability experts from Syria and America gathered in Damascus, Syria to produce the first practical, cross-cultural guidebook for implementing the UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The manual below, "Ensuring Rights in Development" was a collaborative effort, authored jointly by Dr. Valerie Karr, Victor Pineda of the Victor Pineda Foundation, Chavia Ali, and Stephen Meyers.
We invite activists, community leaders, professionals, policy makers, volunteers, non-profit organizations, and people with and without disabilities to take advantage of this material to not only learn, but to increase awareness and further reforms towards inclusion and development.
The following link allows you to view or download the guidebook in its entirety.
Forward by Jay T. Snyder, Chairman of the Open Hands Initiative
Dear Readers,
I am proud to present this major new tool for understanding—not only of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities—but for understanding between peoples of different regions, beliefs, and cultures who share basic values and experiences with disability.
Working with prominent disability experts and self-advocates from the Middle East and the West, the Open Hands Initiative has created “Ensuring Rights in Development”, the first practical guidebook to promote the inclusion of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in the process of development in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region.
“Ensuring Rights in Development” was created through a unique diplomatic initiative that brought together experts from America and the MENA region on the basis of their shared values and experiences with disability. By bringing together theory, policy, and practice from a development perspective, the guidebook provides practical examples to those implementing the principles and articles of the UNCRPD, including policy makers, practitioners, and non-governmental organizations.
The democratic trend in the MENA region means this project comes at a crucial time. The guide’s framework calls for the active participation and collaboration of persons with disabilities and their organizations with the principle actors in development: governments, private corporations, and non-governmental organizations.
For persons with disabilities to fully share in the benefits of reform and development, meaningful participation, access, and social inclusion, as guaranteed under the CRPD, must crosscut all sectors of society. Social actors must be engaged and work cooperatively with disability advocates to fulfill their roles and responsibilities in making the rights outlined in the CRPD a reality.
The Open Hands Initiative believes firmly in the power of everyday people to build relationships that transcend culture, geography, race, and religion. Disability is one of the few issues with the unique power to unite people and families wherever they may be in the world.
By providing practical tools to strengthen the most marginalized members of civil society in the region, we hope to strengthen their societies as a whole, and contribute to fostering trust, understanding, and goodwill between the United States and the Arab and Muslim world.
This guidebook shows just how much can be achieved when people of different backgrounds, cultures, and traditions put aside their differences and come together to create something for the world through friendship, cooperation, and understanding.
Sincerely,
Jay T. Snyder
Co-Founder and Chairman
Open Hands Initiative