In September 2001, a World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance was held in Durban, South Africa. Mexico had included as Co-Chair of its delegation a person with disability called Gilberto Rincón Gallardo. Gilberto Rincón Gallardo was the one who brought before the assembly the proposal to develop a wide and a comprehensive Convention that would recognize the dignity and the rights of persons with disabilities. To the Mexican delegation’s surprise, the proposal wasn’t even voted, it was adopted by acclamation and included in the Durban Action Plan.
Luis Fernando Astorga
Then, the Mexican delegation started to knock on UN doors in New York, by means of a representative called Berenice Dias. Berenice Dias soon met with strong resistance from developed countries, who were concerned by the substantial cost that the development of a Convention and the associated conference servicing would entail. For instance, the very creation of a Committee would imply maintaining a whole apparatus of officials. However, UN budgets are based upon Member State contributions, and, obviously, those who contribute the most are the developed countries.
Luis Fernando Astorga
I don’t think that the emergence of such a treaty was meant to be. It also happened on account of the Mexican delegation’s brilliance. Vicente Fox, by then the Mexican president, had made a pledge to disability representatives to make an international treaty a priority. Mexican diplomats were prepared for the tricks that were played in the lead up to the negotiations. Many governments were interested in the negotiations not happening.
Marianne Schulze
As I was the Chair of the Inter-American Institute on Disability and Inclusive Development (IIDI), I was informed by a member of the US Mission to the UN that there was reluctance amongst developed countries to the launching of the Convention elaboration process. When this person called me, he said that the voice of the disability movement was needed to express the movement’s endorsement and advocate for the process. The Institute could count on strong networks and an extensive list of people organized by language. Together with Luis Fernando, we rapidly drafted some notes for the disability movement, which we sent out to all the members of this list. This is a part of the story that was not visible.
Rosângela Bierman Bieler
All this contributed to the adoption of Resolution 5668 on December 19th, 2001, and this launched the negotiation process. Mexico accepted that the Resolution would not be directly oriented to the option of a Convention. This led to the creation of the Ad Hoc Committee, which during the August 2002 Session, was given the task of determining whether it would be convenient or not to elaborate an international treaty on the rights of persons with disabilities. This obliged us to make a case for the need of having a Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. During these discussions, one of the opposing argument was that persons with disabilities were already included in other treaties. We tried to prove this irrelevant, because a convention on the rights of women and children had been created despite women and children being also included in other conventions. Another argument was that there were already the Standard Rules, and here we had to argue that these were only recommendations, and in no case equivalent to a binding treaty.
Luis Fernando Astorga
What was important was that during the 2nd Session of the Ad Hoc Committee, in June 2003, the idea of a Convention was accepted, which led to discussions about what type of Convention it would be. Some were in favor of a proposal focusing on the elimination of discrimination, but ultimately it was decided to go for a broader and more comprehensive treaty. Another issue was determining how to develop the negotiation process. Instead of setting up a committee of international experts, an original option was adopted. Indeed, following New Zealand’s proposal, the decision was made to create a Working Group rather than to pay a whole group of experts, which avoided substantial costs. The Working Group was composed of 40 members: 27 State representatives and 13 international civil society organizations representatives (5 from each continent, 7 from worldwide Disabled People’s Organizations and 1 representative of national human rights organizations). At first, one might have thought that this would be a complicated negotiation, like trying to mix oil and water. Indeed, one might have expected to have on the one side State representatives with very little knowledge of disability restricting the debates, and on the other side members of the civil society asking for the moon. This was not the case!
Luis Fernando Astorga
The draft of the Convention was elaborated in a two-week period, during the cold New York winter, in January 2004. It was a time of serious negotiations, outside of the 8 sessions of the Ad Hoc Committee. The Working Group was coordinated by Don MacKay, then ambassador of New Zealand at the UN, and later to become the Ad Hoc Committee’s president. I think that all the issues were addressed and when, for some issues, there were distinct positions, all the positions were recorded at the bottom of the text for further discussions. […] The draft was so good, that if you were to make a comparison with the final version of the Convention, you would find a lot of similarities.
Luis Fernando Astorga
Once the draft had been elaborated, then came the 3rd, 4th and 5th Sessions (between May 2004 and February 2005). During these sessions, other suggestions were made and additional proposals were added to those reported in the first draft, adding an extra 2 to 3 pages to each article, but not really ruling on the contents of the proposals. […] This began to change, as soon as Don Mackay became the Ad Hoc Committee president. He was assigned with the task of issuing a draft that could be used as a compromise. This draft it was called the “President’s draft” […]. The 7th and 8th Sessions were based on this draft, and their objective was to try to clean it up. The President had received the instruction that the Convention could only be approved if there was agreement on all of its articles. Such agreement was eventually reached in August 2006, and the final approval was celebrated on the December 13th, 2006.
Luis Fernando Astorga
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