OSCE Centre promotes efforts to integrate disabled women into society

ASTANA, 10 February 2011 – The OSCE Centre in Astana co-organized a high-level conference on gender equality and integration of women with disabilities into society that started in Astana today.

More than 50 representatives of the parliament, the presidential administration, government agencies, non-governmental and international organizations as well as media representatives took part in the conference, organized by the OSCE Centre in Astana, Kazakhstan's Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights, the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection and the Kazakhstan Association of Women with Disabilities.

Participants discussed how to establish national mechanisms to promote disabled women’s rights in order to ensure their full integration into society. Experts from Latvia, Germany and Ukraine highlighted well-working examples of gender-sensitive policies with a focus on the rights of disabled women.

Kazakhstan has signed but not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Article 6 of  the Convention stresses the importance of guaranteeing rights for the development, advancement and empowerment of disabled women.

The Head of the OSCE Centre in Astana, Ambassador Alexandre Keltchewsky, welcomed the government's establishment of a working group to develop a National Action Plan to ensure that the rights of persons with disabilities are respected.

The working group includes representatives of central and local governmental authorities, public associations of disabled persons, non-governmental and international organizations.

“It is very important to ensure the participation of women with disabilities in the decision-making process, especially regarding the issues of their primary concern," he said.

Ambassador Askar Shakirov, Kazakhstan's Commissioner for Human Rights, added: “The most pressing concerns include involving disabled women in the labour market, facilitating their access to education, protecting their reproductive health, providing them with free quality medical care, ensuring their access to information, providing them with quality assistive devices, ensuring their unimpeded access to social services and  ensuring their access to public transportation.”

The conference is part of an OSCE Centre project to support Kazakhstan's National Human Rights Commissioner (Ombudsman), developed in co-operation with the Danish Institute for Human Rights and Kazakhstan's Ombudsman Office.