Treaty to expand disability rights overseas is threatened in Senate, frustrating Senator John Kerry

[Mass]

3. 24 Hours to Decide

http://www.kerry.senate.gov/press/in_the_news/article/?id=de57c54c-5056-a032-5201-5180bb473c83

24 Hours to Decide
Monday, December 3, 2012
by John Kerry
Huffington Post

Watching cable television you might not know it, but the Senate is on the eve of a major decision that -- regardless of outcome -- will ripple around the globe. It's time for action in the Senate on the Disabilities Treaty, and it's time for grassroots action to help push us across the finish line.


Here in the Senate, with all the world's eyes watching, we can tomorrow approve the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and keep faith with the best of America's tradition of leadership in the world when it comes to empowering people living with disabilities, wherever they live.

You'd think this issue can transcend politics. The Disabilities Convention is a non-discrimination treaty that will extend essential protections for millions of disabled Americans when they leave our shores.


Twenty-two years ago, when we passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, the United States set the standard at home to end discrimination against people with disabilities. Approving the treaty now won't require any changes whatsoever to American law -- none, zero, zip. It simply requires other countries to improve their own record on disability rights -- in effect taking our gold standard here at home and exporting it to countries that have never heard of disability rights or have never changed their laws to accommodate people with disabilities.

Fair treatment for persons with disabilities is a human rights issue like any other. And no one understands that connection in a more personal, searing way than Chen Guangcheng -- the self-taught lawyer and blind Chinese activist who suffered mightily at the hands of local authorities, but who refused to be silenced.

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