Italy’s Disabilities Minister Stefani, “implementing UN Convention is moral duty”

NEW YORK/ROME, JUNE 15 – The “moral duty” to learn from the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic and redouble efforts to build a more inclusive post-pandemic world by implementing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was at the heart of the call made today by the Italian Disability Minister, Erika Stefani, at the 14th Session of the Conference of States Parties.

“The pandemic has brought to light many critical aspects of our welfare systems. The new phase we are experiencing today, that of restarting, obliges us to take stock of what has happened”, said Stefani, calling upon Member States for more investments in “promotion” as in “promotion” as the main tool for inclusion and, consequently, also for the protection of the rights of persons with disabilities.

“At the same time – remarked the minister – politicians, as well as all other stakeholders involved, must aim at consolidating disability mainstreaming: the society we aspire to does not need separate and special policies, but increasingly inclusive policies”.

Attention to persons with disabilities transversally characterizes all the measures of the Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan, in line with the Convention. The individual project, for example, whose implementation and enhancing are provided for within the Plan, pursues, in fact, the goal of achieving full integration of persons with disabilities through a comprehensive planning of interventions, in every dimension or sphere of living.

“Our perspective aims at considering the person with a disability in its complexity and in a multidimensional vision, attentive not only to material ‘needs’, but also to existential, relational, emotional, educational and cultural needs”, Stefani said, stressing that to ensure that the interventions we fund are inclusive, the National Observatory on the Condition of Persons with Disabilities will monitor that the reforms proposed in the Recovery and Resilience Plan are fully inclusive and non-discriminatory. (@OnuItalia)