Vatican Refuses To Sign Global Disability Rights Treaty In a December 14 address to the United Nations General Assembly, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, Pope Benedict XVI's U.N. Ambassador, said the Vatican supported most of the "helpful" provisions in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, particularly those calling for people with disabilities to be fully included in society. However, Archbishop Migliore noted, a clause requiring member nations to provide "sexual and reproductive health and population-based public health programs" to people with disabilities might actually be used to promote abortions to keep children with disabilities from being born. "The same convention created to protect persons with disabilities from all discrimination in the exercise of their rights may be used to deny the very basic right to life of disabled unborn persons." "For this reason, and despite the many helpful articles this Convention contains, the Holy See is unable to sign it," he concluded. On December 13, the General Assembly approved the treaty, which is being hailed as the first U.N. human rights treaty in the 21st century. U.N. member nations will be able to sign onto the convention beginning on March 30 of next year. It will come into force once 20 nations have ratified it. Related: --- Reproduced here under special arrangement
with Inclusion Daily Express international disability rights news service. |
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