Op-ed: Senate should ratify disability rights pact
August 3rd, 2009Writing in the Baltimore Sun, Nancy Langer praises President Obama’s announcement that the U.S. will sign the The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. She urges the Senate to ratify the pact.
U.S. humanitarian assistance and disaster relief must incorporate special programs for people with disabilities. Disability rights are not merely “domestic” (as the Bush administration insisted even as it let people in wheelchairs drown during Hurricane Katrina). They are global.
By making good on his promise to support this convention, the president has set sail toward more sensible U.S. policy. The Senate should support the president and people with disabilities around the world and ratify the convention.
(Nancy Langer is the director of external relations for the Henry L. Stimson Center, a global think tank in Washington.)
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