Pretoria - Delegates at the Disability Rights Summit have committed to taking individual and collective responsibility to ensure that the White Paper on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is successfully implemented.
The three-day summit was organised by the Department of Social Development to analyse and convert the White Paper on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities into realisable outcomes.
The Draft National Disability Rights Summit Declaration acknowledged that people with disabilities in South Africa continue to experience unacceptably high levels of exclusion, marginalisation and discrimination.
The declaration also stressed that the mainstreaming of disability considerations is everyone’s responsibility. It called for legislation to be put in place to advance disability rights.
“Policies are not enforceable, [hence] there is a need to ensure that all obligations contained in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and all the policy directives of the White Paper on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities [are] captured in law,” the draft declaration proposes.
Summit delegates will now have an opportunity to review and discuss the draft declaration and make final inputs for the drafting of the final declaration to take forward the implementation of the white paper.
Meanwhile, on Friday evening, the summit hosted the National Disability Awards ceremony to celebrate people with disabilities and disability activists who excelled during 2015.
The awards were conferred to:
• Samkelisiwe Cecelia Mshuqwana – National Disability Young Leader Award;
• Dr William Peter Rowland – National Lifetime Achievement Award;
• Harry January Tharipane Mohale – National Disability Posthumous Award;
• Jabulile Sonia Ngwenya – National Woman with Disability Award;
• Thabang Moruti – National Disability Heroes Award;
• Woolworths – National Disability Company Award;
• Old Mutual – Inseta National Disability CEE Equity Award and
• Vodacom – SADA Award for change agents and disability champions among South Africans.
– SAnews.gov.za
