Playing games with lives

People with disabilities, we were told in headline news, would be “afforded all rights flowing from this binding legal instrument.” This ratification happened despite the fact that the USA has not as yet done so.

This was a landmark event and led to a series of high-profile workshops and information sessions. One of the most important pieces of information that these sessions offered was that our government had to submit an obligatory report two years after ratification.

This report would state and measure how far the country has progressed in implementing the principles of the convention. In tandem with this, non-government organisations (NGOs) were advised to write a shadow report that would in effect create checks and balances to ensure real progress in matters pertaining to those with disabilities.

Over the past two years, individuals and NGOs have readied themselves for all the changes that ratification would bring and for the process of reporting. There was a week-long training workshop hosted by the US Embassy; there have been meetings; NO DES (Network and Outreach for Disability Education and Sensitisation) at UWI held a symposium and representatives of the various disability groups formed a shadow reporting committee.

And then lo and behold, shortly after all the speeches and the events at the Hyatt and the formation of a CO DO-led shadow reporting team, we discovered that by some strange, unaccountable and deeply mysterious strategy, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) website (http://tbinternet.ohchr.

org/_layouts/TreatyBodyExternal/ SessionsList.aspx?Treaty=CRP), Trinidad and Tobago is not scheduled for any CPRD State Party Report this year or in future sessions.

Why? No one knows.

However, for the past year the CO DO-led shadow reporting group has been simply treading water. And thus far no progress has been made in actually writing a report.

And why should there be any progress? After all the Government is making no report. There is nothing to shadow. Why were disability activists who took time off from their work to attend meetings not told this? Because in this cynical world of Trinidad and Tobago, wasting time is possibly the best way of keeping people quiet. So here we go again.

What is more, many would seem to have been aware that these representatives from so many groups who travelled to Port-of-Spain on countless occasions were simply wasting their time.

Those who participated in the various committees of the CRPD steering committee may well wonder what it was all about and whether this whole charade was an act of cynicism.

But all the activity and media hype have served one purpose. They show that we play games with the lives of others and in particular with the marginalised.

They demonstrated the truth of the old adage that it is how things seem rather than how they are that really matters in the public domain.

So we seemed to be busy looking at the law and at services and in particular at education for children and adults with disabilities. But in reality it was all a show.

The biggest part of the carnival parade was the appointment of the inter-ministerial committee “to promote, protect and monitor for the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,” with letters dated July 20, 2015. This was in preparation for the obligatory report.

Those appointed to this inter-ministerial committee were mandated to “prepare and submit a comprehensive report on the measures taken to give effect to the obligations under the convention and on the progress made on that regard within two years after entry into force of the convention.” I do not know why or how this report is not now forthcoming. What I do know is that those on the shadow reporting committee were not told. I also do not know whether those on the inter-ministerial committee were in the know. If they were, then they are guilty of a serious breach of their obligations to “continuously engage in dialogue with the community of people with disabilities to provide for their involvement and full participation in the monitoring process.” Would those involved in the various disability groups be willing to sacrifice potential grants or salaries to actually agitate and further their cause? For one of the age-old strategies in dealing with activists is making them part of the establishment.

Ma y - be I have mi s s e d s o m e - t h i n g .

But was this all a game?