Living Letters : Voices at the Intersection of Disability, Culture, Gender and Ageing- Reflection on 20 Years of the CRPD (COSP19 Side Event)

Thank you.
Good morning and welcome to today's COP 19 side event, living letters, I sorry, voices of the intersection of disability, culture, gender, and aging, reflections on 20 years of the CRPD.
This side event has been organized by Disabled People's International, Korea, DPI Korea, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and Queensland Advocacy for Inclusion from Australia.
It has been sponsored by the permanent Mission of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations and the Ministry of Health and Welfare of the Republic of Korea.
We express our deep gratitude for their support of this event.
My name is Alex Slad and I use hehim pronouns, and I will be the moderator of the side event today.
I am a male presenting person with brown hair, glasses, I'm wearing a blue suit, and I have lived with vision impairment since birth.
In Australia, I'm a solicitor practicing in elder Law and Human Rights at Kaxton Community Legal Center, and I am the Secretary of Queensland advocacy for inclusion.
I would like to briefly acknowledge the designated lands on which we are meeting in New York, are the traditional lands of the Lenape people and pay my respects to elders, past and present and acknowledge any indigenous people attending today and all indigenous people around the world, as well as the agar and Turbo peoples who are the traditional owners of the lands on which I live and work back in Brisbne, Australia.
We have a number of esteemed speakers at today's session, and I will introduce them as we go through the session today.
There are also we've received a number of letters from members of the Australian disability community in Queensland, which reflect on the impact of the CRPD over the past 20 years.
We have copies of these at the front of the room, and after today's session, you're welcome to come to the front and read them.
I would be advising, though, that they do contain some swear words and use quite raw language to describe the impacts of various systems on people's daily lives.
So please be mindful that it does contain some swear words.
We will not be using any of that language during today's session, but it is just a caution if you do read any of the letters today.
We'll now move on to our list of speakers.
We have a number to go through today.
So first, we will be receiving some congratulatory remarks from Mr.
Lee Yang Sk, President of Disabled People's International Korea and miss Lee un Hi, Director General Disability Rights Support Division, Ministry of Health and Welfare.
First of all, I would like to warmly congratulate you on side events, therapy at 20 achievements and challenges through the voices of persons with disabilities.
I also wish to express my sincere appreciation to disabled people's International.
The International and National Human Rights Commission of Korea and K reed Bs for inclusion following organization meaningful events.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Over the past 20 years, the convention has brought about important changes.
It has helped us see persons with disabilities, not as observes of protection, but as hurdles of rights.
It has also provided a clear standards for governments to ensure the full and effective participation of persons with disabilities in society.
However, we cannot yet say that the premise of the convention has been fully realized in the lives of all persons with disabilities.
In particular, persons with disabilities who experience intersecting forms of discrimination, including women, children, older persons, and persons from migrant backgrounds still face many institutional and social barriers.
In this regard, today's event is especially meaningful.'s discussion is not only about reviewing laws and policies.
Through the voices of persons with disabilities, we will be able to look more closely at the gap between the implementation of the convention and real life experiences.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare fully recognized that the voices of persons with disabilities must be the starting point of policy as well as an important standard for evaluating it.
In line with the principles of the therapy, the ministry will continue its efforts to better guarantee the rights of persons with disabilities, including the right to independent living, participation in the community, protection from violence and abuse and access to education, culture, leisure, and sports.
We will also continue to strengthen cooperation among the governments, national human rights institutions, civil society, and organizations of persons with disabilities.
I sincerely hope that today's discussion will help advance the implementation of the CRP and further expand international cooperation centered on person with disabilities.
Once again, I warmly congratulate you on this meaningful side event and I thank all of you for joining us today.
Thank you.
Good morning, everyone.
De P Organization of persons with disability, UN officials and friends from civil society.
My name is Yong Zhou Li.
I am the President of Disabled People's International Career.
Thank you very much for joining us today.
First, I would like to sincerely thank the permanent mission of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations and the Ministry of Health and Welfare of the Republic of Korea for supporting this important side event.
I also would like to thank the National Human Rights Commission of Korea and Organization of Persons with Disability P Australia for sharing their experience and solidarity with us.
This year is very mean because we mark the 20th anniversary of the convention of the rights of persons with disability.
But today, we are not here only to celebrate the 20 years.
Now it's time to ask an important question the rights of persons with disability to living realized in people's lives For the past five years, DPI Korea has been learning and working with the international community on CRPD implementation and disability monitoring.
We studied many experience and good examples from other countries.
Through this process, we learned an important principle.
Persons with this disability are not only of police, rely on the leaders and evaluators.
Based on this understanding, the PA Korea has prepared a disability related monitoring report.
The report are not just document.
They contain the reliable based experience and challenges of persons with disability.
We also wanted to sell this experience beyond Korea.
Together with the organization and institutions in the Asia P, we have continued to create opportunities for education, exchange and cooperation.
We believe that position of life becomes strongest through international solidarity and cooperation among persons with disability.
The next 20-years-old CRPD should not only be about promise, it should be about implementation of rights.
And right at the center of this process, there must always be the participation and leadership of persons with disability.
I hope today's discussion will become a meaningful starting point for stronger cooperation and stronger implementation of disability rights around the world.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for those remarks and grounding today's session in the importance of an ongoing commitment to the CRPD, but also looking forward to how we can collaborate across regions and globally to learn from each other's growth and progress.
We are now extremely honored to have miss Kim Myun chairperson of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to share some reflections from her extensive experiences in this space.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Distinguished representative of a state colleague from the United Nations, leaders of Organizations on Persons with Disabilities, human rights institution, civil society partners advocacies and dear friends, especially from Korea.
It is my great honor and pleasure to offer my alumni congratulations on the opening of this manicar side event, reading letters, voices at the intersection of disability, culture, gender, and aging reflecting on 20 years of the Cability.
What a lovely subject and title.
I would like to sincerely congratulate and thank Disabled People's International Korea, Queensland Advocacy for inclusion, and National Human Rights Commission of Korea for organizing this important event.
I also extend my appreciation to the permanent mission of the Republic of Korea, to the United Nations and the Minister of the Health and Affairs of the Republic of Korea for their support and to all partners because contributors and participants who made this gathering gospel.
As we mark the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, we are invited not only to celebrate achievement, but also to listen more deeply.
The CLPD changes the word understanding of Disability.
It affirmed that persons with disability are not object of charity, welfare, or protection, but rights holders, decision makers, leaders, and the pool members of society.
However, 20 years after the adoption of the convention, we must ask an honest question, how far have the rights recognized in the CLP CLPD truly reaches the everyday lives of persons with disabilities.
These side events provide a powerful and moving way to answer the question.
Three, the approach of living letters.
Animals letters written by a person with disabilities become a bridge between legal commitment and liability.
These letters remind us that CLT is not only a treaty text.
It is also promise to every person with disabilities that their dignity will be respected, their boys will be heard, their autonomy will be protected and their life will be valued.
The beauty and strengthening of the living letters approach is that it allows us to hear experience that are too often hiding behind the stasics, policies, and institutional effort.
A letter can clarify memory, legss, hope, and truths.
A letter can speak to the government, to the school, to a hospital, to a justice system, to a style basis provider, to a home country or even to one's future self.
These letters do not merely describe individual cases.
They bear witness to systemic loyalties.
They label the battles that still existed.
Institutional legal Act.
Paternalistic systems in accessible environment, discriminations, violence, exclusion, and the denial of autonomy.
But they also reveal strengthening survival cultural identity, community resilience, and empowerment.
This is why today's event is so important.
It placed lived experience at the center of the CLDD implementation.
In the minors, the implementation cannot be measured only by learn audited or policies announced.
It must be measured by whether a person with disability can live independently in the community, whether women and girls with disabilities are protected from discrimination and violence, whether first nation persons with disabilities are here through culture state process, whether older persons with disability live with dignity, whether young person with disabilities can learn, work, participate, and imagine their future.
The CLPD article reflected in today's discussion saw the deep and invisibility of the convention.
Article 6 lines that women ingle with disabilities experience multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination.
Article 9 tell us that accessibility is a precondition for all other rights.
Article 16 requires protection from exploitation, violence, Sorry, I lost the way.
Yeah, a exploitation, violence and abuse.
Article 19 offer the right to ride, not to pre bills.
Article 27 offer the right to work and employment on the equal basis with others.
Article 24 legalizing inclusive education as a right.
And Article 33 reminders one of the most important principle of the convention, persons with disabilities and their representative organizations must be actively involved in monitoring its implementation.
In this sense, this side event itself is an example of Article 33 in action.
It brings together organization of persons with disabilities, advocacy organizations, national human rights institution and international partners.
It demonstrates the monitoring the CLPD must not be a closed institution exercise.
It must be participatory grounded in life experience and lead by persons with disability themselves.
I'm particularly pleased that this event highlighted voices at the intersection of discriminate on disability, culture, gender, and acing.
The CLPDTT that persons with disability now the single hormone general school Each person's experience is shaped by gender age, cultural, race, ethnicity, indigous identity, social protection, poverty, migrant, and many other realities.
If implementation does not address this intersection, then many people will demand invisible even within disability policy.
The inclusion of the first nation person with disabilities, older persons with disability and young persons with disabilities is especially meaningful.
The experience reminders that the future of the CRPD must be built not only through universal principle, but also through respect for diversity, histories, the communities, culture, and forms of knowledges.
Dear friends, the 20th anniversary of the C should not be only a moment of celebration.
It should be a moment of renewed responsibility.
We must celebrate progress, but we must also have the courage to hear what event pain.
We must recognize achievement, but we must also confront the system that continue to control, exclude institutionalized, silence or understand made a person with disabilities.
The next approach of CIPD implementation must move from recognition to transformation and must move from rights on paper to right in practice.
It must move from the consultation to genius leadership by person with disabilities, and it must move from fragment services to system to support autonomy, inclusion, and justice.
I hope today's discussion will inspire all of us to listen to the weeping letters, not as a story from the Mason, but as a guardians from the center of the human rights practice.
These voices are not asking for sympathy.
They are calling for justice.
They are calling for accountability.
They are calling for society where every person with disability can live with dignity, freedom, belonging, and hope.
On behalf of the UN Committee on the advisor Persons with Disabilities, I warmly congratulate the organizers and all participants.
May this event contribute to deeper understanding, stronger solidarity, and more concrete action for the full implementation of the CRPD.
Thank you so much.
Thank you once again, miss Min, for those really powerful remarks summarizing the importance of today's session and how the work of the disability community is a live and active, progressing, sort of, you know, way of looking at the issues that we need to tackle as a collective.
We'll now turn in a slight change to our program.
We'll be hearing now from miss Sophia Renalds, Director of Disability Rights to the Australian Human Rights Commission, who will share and consider insights from the Australian context on Article 33 of the CRPD.
Thank you very much, distinguished guests.
Good morning.
Thank you for the invitation to participate in this side event.
My name is Sophia Renaldez.
I'm appearing in place of Rosemary Kayes who unfortunately could not travel to New York this year due to health reasons.
Commissioner Kayes sends her apologies and while I really wish that she could be here, I'm also very honored to speak at this event on behalf of the Australian Human Rights Commission.
When I reflect on the work of human rights, I often return to the fundamentals.
For me, that is Article 1 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and in rights.
This is often referred to as the anchor norm.
Of international human rights law.
The interpretation of Article 1 of the UDHR within the CRPD, I think is encapsulated in the human rights model of disability and particularly within the CRPD's general principle that the respect for difference and acceptance of persons with disabilities as part of human diversity and humanity.
What the CRPD does is affirm that impairment is a normal and expected experience for us all as humans, and it situates disability as a result of the way in which society responds to impairment.
It's this response that results in inequality, discrimination, segregation.
This side event, I think is very powerful in weaving the letters from and the voices of persons with disabilities, our lived realities, and bringing that into the discussion on legal requirements and obligations of the CRPD.
In that way, it's reentering the discussion on our shared humanity and showing the ways in which society is responding and or failing individuals as a result of their impairment.
I have to say that I think this kind of depth is often absent in these international forums, a huge congratulations to the organizers on taking this formula to cost and on this wonderful event.
National Human Rights institutions, which go under the acronym NHRI of which the Australian Human Rights Commission is one, NHRIs have this mandate of translating international treaty obligations into the domestic context.
We often use the analogy of the bridge.
We're the bridge between the international and the domestic and we're also the bridge between civil society and governments.
Under the CRPD, Article 332 enables states parties to designate, usually they designate NHRIs as independent monitoring mechanisms.
Acronym for that is IMMs to promote, protect, and monitor the implementation of the CRPD.
This is a formal status and it's a formal role within the CRPD architecture, and it means that NHRIs are usually uniquely positioned to make authoritative recommendations to states parties on how policy and legislation contributes or not to the advancement of the implementation of the CRPD.
When the role of IMMs is considered in conjunction with Article 333, and this is really a necessity in terms of being considered in that way.
If you look at 332 with 333 and then bringing in the general obligation in Article 43, IMM should ideally be a partnership between NHRIs and organizations of persons with disabilities.
And so it's by design that the monitoring role within the CRPD includes the lived reality of persons with disabilities and all that diversity to ensure that domestic implementation genuinely and appropriately responds to the real lives of persons with disabilities and the real barriers that they face in today's world.
That requires a really deep listening of individual stories such as those that we will hear today.
State parties have their own obligations under Article 43 to establish mechanisms to engage and consult with persons with disabilities.
This happens independently of NHRIs and independently of the work of the IMMs, but it is a crucial part of the monitoring by states of the implementation of the CRPD.
Really moving from the abstract and this high level data into the qualitative and the real life and the everyday.
Um, the last point I'll make is that really, you know, we can no longer look at specific issues for women with disabilities here, children with disabilities there, older persons, First Nations people with disability, LGBTQI plus persons with disabilities.
And we can't look at persons with disabilities as if they are homogeneous group.
We need to bring in intersectional approaches.
In fact, um, as our committee member reminded us, intersectionality is a general principle within the CRPD.
This means that we need to, um, bring disability in all of the spaces where we're discussing the rights of women, children, older persons, first nations, et cetera, often referred to as the mainstreaming.
Of disability policy.
The letters you will hear today, I think will show you that this is not only about disability, but it's about the humanity and the diversity that we all carry in some way or another.
Again, I thank and I congratulate the organizers and most importantly, I thank the writers of all of these letters.
I'm very sorry, but I will have to run into the general assembly room, so I will leave you here, but thank you again for the invitation to speak and I wish you well with this side event.
Thank you so much, miss Ronalz for those remarks and then for fitting us in in a very busy cost schedule today and really grounding, again, the importance of intersectionality and the practical importance of hearing the real voices of people with disability.
So we'll now turn to Mr.
Kim on Wok, Secretary-General of Disabled Disabled People's International Career.
Thank you.
Hello, distinguished delegate, colleagues and friends.
I'd like to express my sincere appreciation the permanent mission of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations and the Ministry of Health will be the Australian Human Rights Commission, and all Australian friends and partners who made this event possible.
Time is almost noon.
Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Yong Kim and I'm speaking today on behalf of the disabled people's International Korea, TPI Korea.
I know we are approaching the lunch time, but there are still excellent speakers coming after me.
I will try not to stand between you and either of them.
Today, I would like to begin with one simple question.
What has really changed during the past 20 years and more importantly, how much of the changes has been felt in the daily life of persons with disabilities? This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of persons with disabilities, the CRPD.
Ten years ago, the world made an important commitment.
Persons with disabilities are not object of charity or protection.
We are equal citizens with equal rights.
20 years later, we must ask ourselves a simple question.
Have these rights become reality or do they remain premised on papers? Today, I would like to share the experience of DPI Korea in Disability lead CRPD monitoring and what we have learned through this process.
DPI Korea is an organization of persons with disabilities.
Our works guide by one simple principle, nothing about us without us.
Over the years, like many countries, Korea has made progress.
The law has improved, policies have expanded, service have increased.
But like many countries, we still face a gap between policy and reality.
Many persons with disabilities still face barriers every day.
Students with disabilities are still excluded from full participation in schools.
Many persons with disabilities, especially those with high support needs and intellectual disabilities still face barriers in finding dissent to work.
Even when persons with disabilities have the education, qualification, and skills, opportunities are not always equal.
This can be seen in professions such as teaching where persons with a disability remained significantly under represented.
Digital service and AI technology are growing very quickly, but many persons with disabilities are being left behind.
Woman with disabilities continue to face the multiple forms of discrimination.
These are not simply service gap.
These are human rights issues.
This leads us to one important question, who should evaluate the implementation of the CRPD? Our answer is very clear.
Persons with disabilities must be part of that process and organizations of persons with disabilities must have a leading role.
Government report is also important, but government reporting alone is not enough.
To often success is measured by budget, programs, and numbers, but right cannot be measured only by numbers.
The real question is this can persons with disabilities make their own choices? Can they live independently in their communities? Can they participate equally in societies? Too often these questions are missing from policy evaluations.
In Korea, the UN Committee on the rights of persons with a disability has already pointed out that meaningful participation and their representative organizations remained limited.
And this is not only a Korean issue, it's a global issue.
In many countries, persons with disabilities are invited to the meetings.
We are asked for our opinions, but to open, this question have already been made.
This is not real participation.
This is not representation, and this is not the future that the CRPD promised.
For this reason, DPI Korea began developing the disability lead monitoring report.
We focus on education, employment, digital and AI accessibility, and the able woman with a disabilities.
What did we learn? We learned that being present in school does not always mean inclusion.
We learned that employment quotas do not always mean equal opportunities.
We learned that new technologies do not automatically create equal access.
We learned that women with disabilities continue to face discrimination in many areas of life.
Most importantly, we learned that right must be experienced in everyday life.
Rights are not word in the law.
Rights must be visible in school, workplace, communities, and public service.
We also learned something else.
Monitoring is not only about identifying problems.
It is also about building leadership.
Persons with a disability began to see their experience not only as a personal changes, but as issue connected to public policy and social systems.
This is what the CRPD mean when you speak out from participation to representation.
As we look to the future, we believe that the next 20 years of CRPD implementation require a new approach.
Government must recognize persons with disabilities not only as a beneficiaries of a policy, but as evaluators, decision makers and leaders.
Participation must move beyond consultation.
It must become shared decision making.
Government should measure success not only through service and spending, but through rights, inclusion, accessibility, and equality.
Distinguished participant.
20 years ago, the CRPD changed the language of disability rights.
Now we must change the reality.
The next 20 years will now be judged by one policy we write or the meeting we hold.
They will be judged by whether persons with a disability can shape the decisions that affect their life.
They will be judged by whether government are willing to share power with the persons with disabilities.
Because representation is not simply about being present.
It is about having influence.
It is about having a voice that matters, and it is about ensuring that government and institution remain accountable to the people whose right they are meant to protect.
This is a promise of the CRPD.
This is the meaning of representation, and this is the path towards justice.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for those remarks and outlining the incredible work of DPI Career and the importance of the monitoring program and moving really beyond looking at numbers and actually grounding it in the lived experience of persons with disability.
And I'd like to really express my thanks to DPI Career and the entire team, especially Yun Jung for really working tirelessly to get this side event going.
So thank you so much.
We'll now turn to miss Cassie Brophy, Chief Executive Officer of mob for mob, who will provide a lot more insights into the Living Letters Project, and we'll read some letters out which we've received from indigenous people with disability across Queensland.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hello, I'm Cassie and I'm a proud Geir woman from the Cowan a region of F North Queensland, Australia.
I am the CEO of Mob for Mob.
Mob for mob is a Queensland's first community controlled First Nations Disability peak created by mob for mob In response to the longstanding gaps our communities were experiencing in disability systems and supports.
We work alongside First Nations people with disability, their families and communities through advocacy, yearning, leadership, and system change, making sure our voices, stories, and lived experiences are not just included, but respected and leading the conversation.
Before today, these stories mostly lived in silence, held in people's hearts, in families, in communities, in grief.
These letters are not polished, they are not written to sound perfect.
They are real.
They carry pain, survival, culture, loss, exhaustion, and love all at once because that is what real life looks like for our people.
While today we speak about the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities articles, behind every article is a person, a young fellow sitting alone in a hospital far from country, a woman fighting to be heard in rooms never built for her, a person surviving trauma, while systems call them problems.
For mob for mob, this event is truth telling.
It is a reminder that rights should not only exist on paper, they should be felt in people's homes, communities, and everyday lives.
The articles represented through these letters are Article 5, equality and non discrimination.
Article 16, Freedom from exploitation, violence and abuse, Article 30, participation in cultural life and community and Article 33, National implementation and monitoring.
And while the articles represented here are listed separately, they do not exist separately in real life.
When equality is denied, harm grows.
When harm grows, connection to culture, community, and safety is disrupted.
When systems fail to respond, communities are left carrying the impact across generations.
Living letters exist, so these experiences are no longer invisible.
Letter one, nobody asked.
I grew up with a lot of stuff happening that no kid should have to go through.
Back then, nobody called it trauma.
It was just life, good or bad.
I was raped as a child and home stopped feeling safe.
All the anger and hurt I carried started showing up all the time.
Instead of getting help, I got pushed into prison.
People saw me as angry or troubled, but nobody ever asks what happened to me in the first place.
It felt like people shamed me and judged my reactions without even trying to work out where they came from.
When I was in prison, mental health support mostly felt like being given drugs and told to move on.
I saw a lot of fellows struggling badly.
Some asked for help and never really got it.
Some of those fellows aren't here anymore.
It took a lot of years before I finally got proper help, even after jail.
There wasn't much support to help me reconnect with community, culture, or just normal life again.
A lot of the time it felt like you were expected to figure it out on your own.
This letter links to the following articles, Article 5, equality and nondiscrimination.
This letter shows how trauma, disability, and pain were seen as bad behavior instead of people stopping to understand what was really happening underneath.
Article 16, freedom from exploitation, violence and abuse.
The story speaks to the harm, neglect, and lack of proper mental health support experienced by people struggling inside the justice system.
Article 30, participation in cultural life and community.
This letter reflects how prison and the lack of support can leave people feeling disconnected from culture, community, and their sense of belonging.
Article 33, National implementation and monitoring.
This story shows the gap between what systems say they do and what people actually live through every day.
Letter two, two roads.
I've spent most of my life feeling like I've had to walk two roads at once, trying to fit into spaces that were never built for people like me.
A First Nations woman, a person with disability, someone constantly made to feel too much in some places and not enough in others.
I've fought for seats at tables that should have already had space for our voices and once there, I still felt the need to justify why I belonged.
That kind of exhaustion stays with you.
So does the feeling of constantly shrinking parts of yourself just to survive systems that were never designed with culture, disability, and lived experience at their center.
But I think about the next generation often.
I want our children to grow up proud of who they are, proud of culture, proud of identity.
I want them to never feel shame for taking up space, asking questions or existing fully as themselves.
I want a future where people with disability, First Nations people, women, and those living at the intersections of all three are not treated as an afterthought to systems, policies, or reform.
We should not have to fight this hard to be heard, safe, included, and valued.
This letter links to the following articles, Article 5, equality and non discrimination.
This letter speaks to the exhaustion of constantly having to prove your worth, your identity, and your right to belong.
Article 16, freedom from exploitation, violence and abuse, it reflects the quiet harm caused when systems make people feel unseen, unheard, and unsafe.
Article 30, participation in cultural life and community.
At its heart, this story is about culture, connection, and wanting future generations to grow up proud of who they are.
Article 33, the National implementation and monitoring.
This letter is a reminder that real change only happens when voices of lived experience are genuinely heard, valued, and included.
Living letter three, fire lit.
My life changed after the accident.
I got taken off community for hospitals and rehabs down in the city.
People think it's just your body that gets hurt.
But being away from home, away from your mob, your culture, that hurts different.
Deep.
I've missed funerals, missed family, miss watching the young ones grow up, missed hearing our language, sitting around fires, hunting, and having big yarns with my people.
The city is beep.
Just another black fella in a hospital bed.
After a while, I stopped feeling like myself.
Shame, lonely, like I don't belong nowhere anymore.
The hardest part is knowing healing for me is back on country.
But there's no proper housing, supports, or disability help back home.
I I stay stuck away.
That ache for country never leaves, feels like part of my spirit got left behind.
All a black fellow wants is to go home, not a burden, not a disability, just home.
This letter links to the following articles, Article 5, equality and non discrimination.
This letter speaks to the barriers Aboriginal people with disability face when trying to access fair support, safe housing, and the right to live with dignity close to community and country.
Article 16, freedom from exploitation, violence and abuse.
The story reflects the deep emotional harm caused by isolation, unsuitable supports, and being left to feel invisible within systems meant to protect and care.
Article 30, participation in cultural life and community.
This letter is grounded in the pain of being separated from country, culture, family, and community, and the lifelong ache that disconnection can leave behind.
Article 33, National implementation and monitoring.
This story is a reminder that people with disability must be listened to properly with systems built around respect, culture, belonging, and real lived experience.
Today, you have heard truth.
Te people, true emotions, true stories.
Our people are still here, still loving heart, still caring community, still carrying culture, still fighting for the next generations to have it easier than we did.
Because the truth is none of this came easy.
Every little win has been fought for, every seat at the table, every policy change.
We are still fighting not just to protect the progress already made, but to build something better.
For systems that listen before they decide, systems that walk with us not ahead of us.
Policies that recognize our differences, but never see them as deficits.
Spaces where people can be unique, diverse, and fully themselves.
No more shall we receive bare minimum, no more shall we be an afterthought.
Living letters is about making sure our voices are heard because our stories are not separate from the work.
They are the reason the work matters.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Cassie, for sharing those letters and obviously acknowledging the writers of those letters for sharing their powerful experiences, and it really highlights how the CRPD in action can link to really clear experiences of people with disability and the ongoing issues and barriers that we face in society.
Um, Queensland advocacy for inclusion also received a number of living letters when we put a call out to our members.
And these letters both impliedly and explicitly referred to articles of the CRPD, including Article 19, living independently and being included in the community, Article 15, Freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and Article 12, Equal Recognition before the Law.
A powerful extract from one such letter written by a woman who lives with an acquired brain injury.
I'll read out to you now.
Article 19 matters because community life is where freedom becomes real.
It is where people build relationships.
They raise families, they work, they learn, they volunteer, they speak up, rest, recover, and belong.
It is where people are known by more than their diagnosis.
It is where they become neighbors.
They become colleagues, friends, leaders, parents, advocates, and citizens.
I'd encourage you to consider creative initiatives such as the living Letters projects in your own communities to continue to raise awareness of the articles of the CRPD, and it allows people to link them directly to their daily life and make them real in action.
It provides a continued way of monitoring the CRPD and also reflecting on ways that we can continue to progress within the disability community.
And again, we have copies of the letters at the front that you're welcome to read at the end of today's side event.
Before we move on to the question and answer section, I'd like to welcome Professor Kim Creon, Professor at on Wu University, who is here representing the National Human Rights Commission of Korea.
Thank you.
Distinguished.
It is my honor to present today on developing monitoring indicators for the implementation of the UNC PD.
My prepared remarks were running a little long, so I will frame them down to a or version, originally eight page now two page.
I hope you don't mind I will share a project by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea to assess how far the convention has been implemented in our country.
As a professor of Special Education at Chu University, I took part in both the research and monitoring program.
Human Rights treaty is not propelled by ratification alone, a norm becomes a living right only when we regularly examine whether it is realized on the ground and pat the binding back into partnership.
Korea ratified the convention in 2008 and has been reviewed by the UN Committee twice in 214 14 and 222 with the next review expected around 2032, leaving a monitoring gap of eight to ten years.
Telling me much of the 2014 and 2014, concluding observation reaped almost b but team in 2022 proved that long cycle state reporting alone can sustain sustained momentum.
Hence, these National Human Rights National Human Rights Commission of Korea, the Korea's independent monitoring mechanism under Article 33 to the outstanding standardized system.
Without standardized indicators, the criteria sipped from one subvey to the next.
Comparison over time becomes impossible and assessment relies on qualitative description.
Developing indicators means translating the conventions of strict norms into measurable languages, turning monitoring into plish feedback system grounded in time series data.
This follows international practice.
The OHCHR applies three dimensional framework of structure, processes and outcome, which we adapted to the Korean context.
The work 2024-2026, we analyzed the conventions articles, the general comments, and concluding observation to Korea and collected 2,151 indicators from 88 domestic and international source.
This was reined through five selection and four exclusion criteria, then validated over three rounds of p survey with 20 experts and inter agency review with 13 mean study tested measurability through some 60 k administrative data and a 2020 P monitoring problem refine the indicators once more.
In short, they rest on three range of verification, scholarly governmentally, experiment expe and one scholarly, two governmentally, three experienttily, The most important value was the substantive realization of participation under Article 4 and 333.
Nothing about those without us.
The 2020 P forum had 21 members.
17 of them, persons with disability work from representative organization spanning nearly every type of disability.
It lands under co chair system, one chair from the commission, one from the disability community, neither side could decide the To make participation real, we produced by text, is the materials and held a preparatory meeting for members with developmental disabilities.
Combined principle of reasonable accommodation was embodied in the conduct of the meetings themselves.
The promise comprised 150 indicators, 112 core and 38 supplementary indicators.
158 indicators measured across structure, processes, and outcome and organized into 18 sectors.
Of the indicators that could be assessed, only two were rated implemented, 43 partially implemented and 80 not implemented.
Together, partial and non implementation accountable more than nine in ten For the first time, we can diagnose the debt gapitatively.
To take one case, the monthly rate of workers with disabilities was only about 67% of the raised wages and because the gap has widened, this indicator was rated not implemented.
Measurement is means, not on end.
This result to be served as the baseline for pure monitoring, provide quantitative ground for the state report around 2032.
And supply objective evidence for the independent report at the committee's review.
Indicators rate is not implemented will be paid back as policy agent agenda items to the responsible ministries.
The task ahead are clear.
Above board, the disaggregation of statistic is urgent since only above the quarter of approved National stats can currently be broken down by disability variable.
The system must become a living one updated for emerging emerging agenda, such as digital rights and climate related disasters and the participation of persons with disabilities must be sustained at every stage.
This project has raised the foundation of transforming monitoring from one op exercise into regular time age based monitoring and stands as a case in which the principle of participation was procedurally embodied.
It is my hope that this indicator system will serve as a solid stepping stone towards the society in which the rights of prepared persons with disabilities are poorly realized.
Thank you very much for your kind attention.
Thank you so much for those remarks and really underscores the importance of measuring implementation and the ongoing project that that requires, and Korea is really leading the way in that regard with some amazing work being done there.
We have time for about two questions only today, unfortunately.
We do have interpreters available.
And I'd encourage people from maybe the Australian delegation to ask questions of our Korean colleagues and some of the Korean colleagues to ask questions of, I guess, Cassie.
Solely at this point from the Australian side of things.
But if someone maybe on this side closest to the door wants to just yes, over there at the back there, thank you.
Good morning.
My name is Bonnie Brayton.
I'm with the Disabled Women's Network Dawn Canada.
I wanted to particularly thank you for sharing the letters.
My organization is partners with Indigenous Disability Canada.
I have to say the parallels between the work that you're doing and the work we're doing with our partners with Indigenous disability Canada is quite striking.
I do want to make sure I connect with you after, but I wanted to say in the context of the human rights framework that was used in the human rights complaints, The majority of human rights in the Canadian context for more than ten years by the Canadian Rights Commission report intersectional human rights complaints.
In fact, a strong focus of those complaints would be women in prisons in Canada.
Of course, a very high number of the women in prisons in Canada are represented by indigenous women, including indigenous women living with both identified and hidden disabilities.
I just wanted to thank you again because I think this is really important.
I will make sure we connect after the panel, but I wanted to say a huge thank you to all of you for sharing this and for bringing forward the important voices of indigenous people with disabilities here today.
Thank you, Mercy Miguch.
I just want to quickly respond and say thank you because it's really important for us to have those connections across the globe, but also to continue working after this.
This is my first time at Cs, so it is great to hear that.
I think we're going leaps and bounds in some areas, but very much in the justice system is a huge issue for First Nations people in Australia, youth, women, men, it's such a high capacity and majority of that could be a solution if it was picked up in the forefront of their disabilities because a lot of them once in the prison system, then that identifies around their disabilities when we could have done that beforehand.
We're working really closely with the government to solution that.
Inquiring disability as a really important connection in terms of the inquiry as it's gone forward.
We have begun to see some progress in that area.
But I was going to say, again, the idea that we're now connecting indigenous people with disabilities from across the globe, I think is an extremely important way that we carry that voice forward.
I just wanted to say thanks again.
Any more questions? No.
No more questions from anybody.
We've got a great panel here.
Don't be too shy.
But if we don't have any questions, nobody, we might wrap up the session and everyone can get to lunch a little bit earlier.
I'd just like to conclude and really just highlight and thank everyone for attending and listening to the living letters.
I again encourage you to consider that project in the future.
I'd just like to conclude with a quote as well.
Former US President Franklin D.
Roosevelt said in 1945, the only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
Let us move forward with strong and active faith.
Although this statement was made by a noted reluctant member of our disability community, and it was made in quite a different wartime context, I would like to say that it does ring true to me in terms of how the CRPD has developed over the last 20 years and our desire to reshape tomorrow by outlining a set of fundamental principles for society to adopt to become more inclusive, equitable, and defined by freedom for people with disability.
Like President Roosevelt, my late grandmother, Valerie Jarius, was also a wheelchair user as a result of the effects of polio.
She was a very positive person, but would often share with me the impacts of age, outdated or discriminatory practices on her daily life, especially as she aged.
So from a very young age, I was taught to keep challenging systems and harmful attitudes, making noise to raise awareness within the disability community and to advocate for a better and better tomorrow and shared realization of tomorrow for all.
So let's hope that tomorrow is far sooner after another 20 years of the CRPD.
Thank you so much to all of our panelists today, and thank you all for attending and enjoy the rest of your time at CoSp.
Thank you.
Thank you.