Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room G-50

YOU MADE A DIFFERENCE!

Panel One:

The Honorable John F. Kerry

Secretary of State

Panel Two:

Ms. Frances W. West   Worldwide Director, Human Ability & Accessibility Center, IBM

The Honorable C. Boyden Gray Former White House Counsel and Ambassador

Mr. Jeremy A. Rabkin  Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law

Mr. Curtis A. Bradley  William Van Alstyne Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law School

Thank you to everyone who attended the November 5th hearing! Based on YOUR incredible show of support, Chairman Menendez has scheduled the second hearing on November 21st in a larger room to ensure that advocates can be present and show the Committee their support in person!  You can RSVP for the November 21st hearing here!  This will help us tell the Committee that the disability community is behind this treaty.

WE NEED YOUR HELP!  

WE CANNOT STOP NOW!

You can also contact Senator Corker at 202-224-3344 and Senator Menendez at 202-224-4744.

On Tuesday, November 5, 2013, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee held the first of two hearings on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, an international disability treaty that was inspired by U.S. leadership in recognizing the rights of people with disabilities worldwide.

Activists representing the broad coalition in favor of the treaty were present at the hearing to show their support. In addition to filling up the hearing room with supporters of the treaty, advocates also filled two additional overflow rooms.

Please join the U.S. Department of State on 

Tuesday, November 19, 2013 at 1:00 P.M. ET, for a LiveAtState Virtual Town Hall on theConvention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Disabilities Treaty). Judy Woodruff, Co-Anchor and Managing Editor for PBS NewsHour, will host a discussion with Judith Heumann,Special Advisor for International Disability Rights and Patrick Murphy, Partner at Fox Rothschild, Philadelphia and a retired Army captain and Iraq War veteran 

To log into the LiveAtState event click or paste this link into your browser: 

https://liveatstate.connectsolutions.com/DisabilitiesTreaty 

Log in by selecting "Guest" on the form.  Please enter your name, organizational affiliation and state in the "Name" box.

During the LiveAtState event, please enter your questions into the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen in the "Questions" window. You may submit your questions during the program via email to Live@state.gov or via Twitter to @StateDept using the hashtag #AskState.

Richard Mukaga, who works at Cheshire Services Uganda, visited the USICD office in late October to meet with USICD Program Manager Andrea Shettle. He is currently in the United States to participate in the 2013 Human Rights Advocacy Program at Columbia University in New York.

Cheshire Services Uganda is one of the deployment sites for the Global Disability Rights Library (GDRL). Richard Mukaga stated that his organization had provided training in basic computer skills to people from various organizations and schools in their local community. They also provided training in how to use the off-line eGranary Digital Library which contains the full GDRL collection of digital materials on disability rights topics. Their eGranary is being actively used by students at various universities for school work and also by members of the disability community, who use it to educate themselves about disability rights issues.

Richard Mukaga stated that Cheshire Services Uganda hopes to someday forge a partnership with an international organization to provide more training in CRPD implementation to the local disability community in Uganda.

• Global Summit on Disability Inclusion in Washington, D.C.: Fifty-seven disability and civil society organizations from 20 countries around the world came together from October 29th to November 2nd, 2013 in Washington, D.C. All organizations involved were united through the U.S. Department of State sponsored Empower Partnerships for Inclusive Communities Program. This two-way exchange program, administered by Mobility International USA, places disability rights at the core of U.S. public diplomacy efforts, and aims to expand the capacity of organization in the U.S. and overseas to promote inclusive communities and advance disability rights around the world. READ MORE

• Offer Deaf Children Education in Sign Language:Human Rights Watch released a video on October 18, 2013, in conjunction with a global conference in Sydney on equality for deaf people, which shows some of the challenges that deaf children and young people are facing, and the opportunities sign language education offers them."Sign language is critical for deaf people to be able to communicate, express themselves, and learn," said Shantha Rau Barriga, disability rights director at Human Rights Watch. "Depriving deaf people of the opportunity to learn sign language can condemn them to devastating isolation." READ MORE

• Where hyenas are used to treat mental illness: Somalia has one of the highest rates of mental illness in the world and with a healthcare system devastated by years of war, most sufferers receive no medical help. Many are kept at home, or even chained up to trees. Some are even locked in cages with hyenas. However, one man is trying to change all that. Dr Hab is not a licensed psychiatrist but rather a nurse who, after three months of specialist training from the World Health Organization (WHO), has made it his mission to rescue Somalia's mentally ill. He claims he is able to treat everything from post-natal depression to schizophrenia. READ MORE

• Organization seeks creation of disability affairs ministry: The African Youth with Disability Zambian network has written to President Michael Sata, seeking the creation of a Ministry of Disability Affairs. According to a letter dated October 1, 2013, interim national coordinator Frankson Musukwa stated that under the Ministry of Community Development, Mother and Child Health, people with disability had been underestimated and were being deprived of their dignity and potential. 

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Member News and Opportunities

International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2013
Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - Tuesday, December 3, 2013  

Development Officer
Posted: Monday, September 16, 2013  

 opportunity  

Marca Bristo - President

Lex Frieden- Vice President

David Hutt - Treasurer

Glen White - Secretary

John Lancaster - Past President

Anita Aaron

Ann Cody

Tony Coelho

Jill Houghton

Axel Leblois

Barbara LeRoy

Susan Mazrui

Patricia Morrissey

David Oaks

Stephanie Ortoleva

Jeff Rosen

Eric Rosenthal

Randy Rutta

Diana Samarasan

Betsy Valnes

Aubrey Webson

Tom Zampieri

Government Members

David Baquis

Joan Durocher

Meredith DeDonna

MarcieRoth

Sue Swenson