• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About DNS
  • Subscribe to DNS
  • Advertise with DNS
  • Support DNS
  • Contact DNS

Disability News Service

the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

  • Home
  • Independent Living
    • Arts, Culture and Sport
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Housing
    • Transport
  • Activism & Campaigning
  • Benefits & Poverty
  • Politics
  • Human Rights
You are here: Home / News Archive / UN expert to hear disabled people’s austerity testimony

UN expert to hear disabled people’s austerity testimony

By John Pring on 15th November 2013 Category: News Archive

Listen

newslatestA UN human rights expert is to visit London later this month to hear first-hand testimony from disabled people about the impact of government cuts and reforms on their lives.

Shuaib Chalklen, the UN’s special rapporteur on disability – whose job is to monitor progress around the world towards equal opportunities – will hear the evidence at an event in north London on 25 November.

Disabled people will be able to tell him their personal stories of how they have been affected by the government’s austerity measures, including cuts and reforms to social care and social security.

The next day Chalklen will be in parliament to launch a major report by Just Fair, a new charity which works in the UK to use human rights to combat poverty and inequality, and to secure social justice.

The Just Fair report will examine the impact of austerity on disabled people’s human rights, including cuts to social care, the closure of the Independent Living Fund (ILF), the imposition of the “bedroom tax”, and cuts to disability living allowance and employment and support allowance.

Chalklen is one of Africa’s most respected disabled figures, having served as a policy analyst for the South African president, as chief executive of the African Decade of Disabled Persons, and as director of South Africa’s Office on the Status of Disabled Persons.

Evidence he collects during his visit is certain to feed into the work of the UN committee monitoring the UK’s implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Linda Burnip, a co-founder of the grassroots protest group Disabled People Against Cuts, which has contributed to the Just Fair report, welcomed Chalklen’s visit.

She said: “He has been keeping a close eye on what has been happening in Europe and is particularly interested to come to the UK to talk to disabled people and find out more about the impact of the cuts and how they are affecting disabled people.

“We are in a situation where we have what could really be described as a grave and systematic violation of disabled people’s human rights.”

She said it was important that the UN knew how the UK government was failing to implement its convention commitments. “The policies being put in place are very regressive. They are taking rights away, rather than progressively building on to them.”

If Chalklen speaks out during his visit, he would be the fourth major international figure to suggest that the government’s austerity package is risking “social damage”.

Professor Sir Michael Marmot told Disability News Service (DNS) last month that UK government cuts to disability benefits risked widening the health gap between disabled and non-disabled people.

Before that, Dr Laszlo Andor, the European Union’s commissioner for employment, social affairs and inclusion, told DNS that the UK government should have done more to “minimise the social damage” caused to disabled people and other disadvantaged groups by its austerity measures.

And Raquel Rolnik, the UN’s special rapporteur on housing, called on the UK government to suspend the “bedroom tax” because of its impact on disabled people and other “vulnerable” groups.

14 November 2013

Share this post:

TwitterFacebookWhatsAppReddit

Related

‘Muddled’ blue badge reforms ‘are to blame for renewal delays’
6th February 2015
UN debate will be reminder of true inclusive education
6th February 2015
IDS breaks pledge on PIP waiting-times, as tens of thousands still queue for months
30th January 2015

Primary Sidebar

Access

Latest Stories

Disabled high-rise leaseholders are living in post-Grenfell fear of fire and financial ruin

Disabled people highlight scores of lockdown concerns

Regulator investigates DWP over universal credit ‘cover-up’

Tomlinson held just a handful of external meetings every month early in pandemic

US retail giant faces legal action over new face covering rule

Minister allows transport industry its fourth exemption from access laws

Government’s pandemic failings caused us ‘horrendous’ challenges, say DPOs

Watchdog has approved care settings for COVID patients in only three-fifths of areas

High court is asked to order fresh inquest into death of Jodey Whiting

MPs call for inquiry into government’s role in COVID deaths of disabled people

Advice and Information

DWP: The case for the prosecution

Readspeaker

Footer

The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2021 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web