CRPD's emergence

Silvia Quan Could you explain how did your commitment towards the rights of people with disabilities start? I grew up as a person without any disability, and then acquired a visual impairment as a young adult. As I could make a comparison between my life experience as a person with [...]

Setia Adi Purwanta What was the situation of people with diffabilities in your environment (Indonesia) before the convention was enforced? What were the major issues people with diff-abilities were facing? Before the Convention, little attention was paid in Indonesia to the rights of “diff-abled” people (see question below for a [...]

Sanna Laitamo Can you tell us more about how you got involved in working towards the realization of the rights of people with disabilities? I started to work for Handicap International In 1998, first in rehabilitation and then I had the opportunity to work as a general rehabilitation and inclusion [...]

Rosângela Berman Bieler Could you tell us more about how you got involved in the disability movement? When I was 19 years old, I acquired a physical disability due to a spinal cord injury, as a result of a car accident. At this time, I was starting my communication [...]

Pamela Molina Can you describe how was the situation of people with disabilities in Chile before the Convention ? Before the Convention, I was living and working in Chile, where I was the president of an organization of deaf people called “Real Citizenship of Deaf People from Chile”. We were [...]

Marianne Schulze How did you get involved in working with people with disabilities? There have been various events in my life that lead me towards disability as a topic. First, when I was a teenager, I worked in an institution for people with acquired injuries. Then, I worked in [...]

Luis Fernando Astorga Could you tell how you got involved in the movement of persons with disabilities? I acquired a physical disability in 1986, as the result of a serious car accident, following which my right anterior leg was amputated and my left limb ended up with a functional [...]

Djikiné Hatouma Gakou How did you join the disability rights movement? First of all, I myself am a person with a disability, I am in a wheelchair. In my case, I was lucky to have a father who did everything he could so that I could go to school, [...]

Alexandre Cote How and why did you find yourself working in the disability rights movement? My first steps with Handicap International were in the field of social development, focusing on partnerships and support to civil society organisations. My involvement in the disability rights movement truly began when I left [...]

Philippe Chervin Can you describe your professional experience in service to persons with disabilities? After fifteen years spent working in the field with Handicap International, I came to the organisation's headquarters in the early 2000s. At that time, new technical areas of intervention were starting to emerge, going beyond [...]