Originally published on the CGS blog on November 20, 2013.
On Thursday, November 21st, Global Solutions staff will be live-tweeting from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s second hearing on U.S. ratification of the Disability Treaty. Secretary of State John Kerry will be testifying on the importance of U.S. leadership, as will a number of other panelists – for and against the treaty. Follow the testimony, submit questions or re-tweet our posts by following our Twitter profile @GlobalSolutions.
GlobalSolutions members have been calling their Senators this month to voice their support for U.S. ratification of the Disability Treaty — and your calls are working! For the first time, our friends on the Committee are telling us that calls from supporters are outnumbering those from opponents. But we can be certain that this will continue. Your calls are more important than ever, as opponents will once again push the Big Lie that derailed ratification in 2012. If you have not yet shared your support, call your Senators’ office today and let them know that, as a constituent, this is important to you.
Our CEO, Don Kraus, shared with the Committee’s chairman, Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Ranking Member, Bob Corker (R-TN) how important U.S. leadership on the Treaty really is:
“By ratifying the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD), the United States will continue to be a leader in setting the standards for ensuring the human rights of individuals with disabilities, as we have under the ADA and other laws. The Convention reflects core American values such as the dignity of the individual, access to justice, the importance of family decision-making and access to appropriate healthcare.
“Ratification is not just the right thing to do; it is the smart thing to do. According to the latest census data, close to 60 million or 18.7 percent of all Americans have some type of disability. CRPD ratification will not only enable U.S. global leadership, it will help to empower these millions of Americans, particularly veterans, business leaders, scientists, students and other disabled Americans who seek to live, work or travel abroad to engage in global commerce more effectively throughout the world, benefiting their lives and the U.S. economy.”
Beyond the immediate needs of providing this protection to American citizens traveling abroad, he noted that United States’ failure to accede to any multilateral treaties in recent years is becoming a detriment to our nation’s economy, security and global leadership. With your calls, we can hope that the deliberate gross distortions of the truth characterized the Treaty’s defeat in 2012 will not be repeated in 2013.
(Read GlobalSolutions.org’s full statement here.)
