General Conclusions And Final Recommendations
This report and monitoring processes shows that in spite of the advancements in policies, laws and programs related to disabilities in Colombia, there is a huge gap for the persons with disabilities to be acknowledged and to fully and effectively enjoy the principles and human rights proposed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
This gap is evident by the high level of abuse and discrimination daily faced by people with disabilities, whose rights to social participation, guaranteed income and support services, privacy and family life, health, habilitation and rehabilitation, education, information and communication and access to justice, as well as their core principles are systematically violated.
In this respect, social participation is the mostly violated aspect within the rights analyzed. This is related to the lack of guaranteed income and support services, which are not adequate for the persons with disabilities to take an active role in the community.
Besides, the family, care providers and partners have an essential and initial role, which is almost permanent, in the respect of privacy, autonomy, dignity and other principles of the CRPD. They also allow for access to systems such as those of health, education, employment, information and communication.
One aspect to be taken into account is that the regulations and legal requirements to make reports and to enforce the rights with specific legal actions are unknown. There is also a lack of acknowledgement of the legal capacity of the persons with disabilities, which is actually the main barrier for the effective enjoyment of human rights.
Taking into account all this information, it may be inferred that all these rights and principles are essentially interrelated and joint. However, their effective implementation requires the development of a balance based on the change of paradigm. This is where most of the violations originate, since persons with disabilities are only seen from the point of view of the disease or deficiency, without even realizing their category of citizens before the society.
The persons with disabilities and their organizations have the joint responsibility to change the current social imaginary which is based on charity and assistance, deficiency and lack of autonomy, among others. This requires the support of government and private bodies, as well as technical and financial cooperation, both at the national and international level, which will allow us to see the persons with disabilities as human beings who provide to the social development.
It is also essential to carry out information, communication and outreach campaigns to teach the broad community that the manner to conceive disability has changed, thus demythologizing the fact that disability means disease.
Current legislative regulation and harmonization must continue to achieve an effective implementation of the CRPD, removing figures such as interdiction to allow for support systems or strategies and support to make decisions, not only for hereditary issues, but also for life as a whole.
Many more conclusions and recommendations may be drawn from the information and data hereby analyzed and systematized. We highlight these as the most significant ones, based on the voice and reality seen by the persons with disabilities themselves, applying the motto of the CRPD in a concrete manner.
This work has allowed us to generate and strengthen the technical capacity regarding human rights of the persons with disabilities and their organizations, and to understand, in a theoretical and practical manner, how the rights of the persons with disabilities are violated, which requires the performance of monitoring, control and follow-up in the implementation of the CRPD.