UK faces UN examination: DPOs ‘delighted’ with exposure of government’s failings – Black Triangle Campaign

Disabled people’s organisations who travelled to Geneva this week to help highlight the government’s continuing human rights violations have praised a UN committee of disabled experts for publicly exposing the UK’s failings.

Civil servants from eight UK government departments, and the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, were grilled over two days about the UK’s record in implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).

The two days ended with the chair of the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities (CRPD), Theresia Degener, telling the UK government that its cuts to social security and other support for disabled people had caused “a human catastrophe” (see separate story).

Another CRPD member, Stig Langvad, said members were “deeply concerned” by the government’s failure to implement the convention, and delivered a withering putdown, telling the UK delegation: “I could provide a long list of examples where the state party doesn’t live up to the convention. Unfortunately, the time is too limited.”

Among the DPOs that travelled to Geneva were representatives of Inclusion London, the Alliance for Inclusive Education, Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), Equal Lives, Black Triangle, Disability Rights UK, Inclusion Scotland and Disability Wales.

Source: UK faces UN examination: DPOs ‘delighted’ with exposure of government’s failings – Black Triangle Campaign

Hate crime initiative sees police reports leap by 500 per cent | DisabledGo News and Blog

A new London-wide scheme has seen the number of disability hate crimes recorded by police increase by 500 per cent within weeks of its launch. The Metropolitan Police’s Disability Hate Crime Matters (DHC Matters) initiative only began rolling out in January, with briefings to officers from teams responsible for community safety, road and transport, local policing, emergency response and crime screening. But already – even before it has fully rolled out – the scheme has seen 89 offences recorded as disability hate crimes across London in February, compared with 15 in the same month in 2015, an increase of about 500 per cent. DHC Matters is led jointly by the Metropolitan Police and the pan-London Deaf and disabled people’s organisation (DDPO) Inclusion London, and was the idea of disabled activist Anne Novis, the force’s independent chair of its disability hate crime working group and an Inclusion London trustee. The initiative aims to improve the way police identify, investigate and

Source: Hate crime initiative sees police reports leap by 500 per cent | DisabledGo News and Blog