Opening of workshop on draft Convention on human rights and disability
| Dr Sev Ozdowski OAM, Acting Disability Discrimination Commissioner 25 March |
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I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet - the Ngunnawal people.
Welcome colleagues - experts from the disability, legal and academic communities and from government.
Welcome especially to New Zealand's Human Rights Commissioner Robyn Hunt who has come across the Tasman to be with us today.
My thanks to the Australian National University's National Europe Centre for providing the venue for this workshop, and to Professor Andrew Byrnes and the Centre for International and Public Law for organising it in conjunction with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.
My particular thanks to Senator Marise Payne, Chair of Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee, who has agreed to open both of the expert workshops we have convened this month to discuss the current development through the United Nations system of a draft international Convention on human rights and disability.
The first workshop was held on the 12th of this month in Sydney in conjunction
with the International Law Association.
These workshops are intended to inform HREOC and disability community
participants in making ongoing contributions to this process.
We hope that our discussions may also assist in informing further development of the Government's contributions.
We are particularly pleased to have with us representatives of the Attorney-General's Department, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Office of Disability who have been participating in the development of a draft Convention on human rights.
As I said in Sydney, one of the things I hope for from these workshops is to explore common ground between the Government's objectives in pursuing reform of human rights treaty processes and the objectives of the disability sector in achieving a Convention which adds value to existing instruments and mechanisms and advances the human rights of people with a disability.
One area where I think we had particularly important discussions in Sydney was in the area of monitoring and implementation issues.
We have scheduled one of our small group discussion sessions this afternoon on those issues, together with sessions on State obligations; Definitions; International co-operation; and "What's missing?" from the current draft. Can I ask you to begin thinking about which of those sessions you will wish to join. At the morning tea break we will be asking you to indicate a choice among these sessions. If there is interest in other parallel discussion sessions we will try to accommodate that as well as or perhaps in substitution for one of the sessions we have listed.
Although the workshop we had in Sydney was extremely useful, one result was that it added even more issues for discussion than we started out with for today's program.
So without further delay I invite Senator Marise Payne to open our proceedings.
