WNUSP board members Moosa Salie and Abdul Maalik (Jeff) Makana attended the International Disability Alliance’s (IDA) expert’s seminar on parallel reporting on the CRPD in Geneva, 7-8 January 2010.

Seminar day 1: 7 January 2010

Our day started early with all delegates already being on the road before 08:00 using public transport to travel to the Palais des Nations, which is the UN headquarters in Geneva, where the two day IDA seminar on shadow reporting was to take place.

IDA had asked each IDA organization to chair one of the sessions. The WNUSP’s turn was the second session, after tea time and just before lunch. Moosa chaired this session on behalf of WNUSP and was complimented by many people afterwards for his efficient time keeping and expert manner in which he chaired the session.

Abdul Maalik, Moosa Salie and Hege Orefellen (WNUSP member from Norway) contributed to all plenary sessions with questions and comments. Overall it was a very valuable day in terms of the information learnt and discussions held. Great opportunities for networking and establishing friendship relations with many of the leaders within IDA were taken advantage of to the fullest. Abdul Maalik recorded a great photographic record of our days in Geneva, some of which accompany this report.

Seminar day 2: 8 January 2010

Day 2 of the seminar once again presented opportunities for Abdul, Hege and Moosa to participate in the plenary discussions of the different session. Hege presented as a speaker from the WNUSP on the Effective use of the UN special procedures to promote the rights of persons with disabilities. Her experience with the special procedures relates mostly to work done through a national human rights committee working on protecting and promoting the rights of persons with psychosocial disabilities. She has been involved in preparing and submitting cases of abuse in the Norwegian Mental Health system to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. 

Once again the day presented the WNUSP team with excellent opportunities for networking. The final session of the seminar was a breakaway session on different thematic areas of the CRPD. Our three delegates participated in the session on Article 12, Legal Capacity. Diane Richler of Inclusion International facilitated this session very well. Unfortunately all the sessions took place in the one large seminar hall in which the all the presentations took place. Therefore the breakaway sessions were difficult in terms of communication. As our group was also the largest group it made it harder to communicate effectively and to get our positions across. Abdul, Hege and Moosa however contributed meaningfully to the discussions.

IDA Dinner

As had been customary IDA delegates meet socially at a restaurant whenever there is an IDA event. All delegates from the different IDA organizations to the IDA steering committee and governing body meetings the following day came together after the seminar at a restaurant called La Dolce Vita. The express purpose of the dinner was to honor the former IDA chair William Rowland from South Africa and to welcome the new chair Jan Peter Stormgren from Sweden.

The dinner was successful and it achieved the goal of creating a spirit of camaraderie amongst the different IDA members old and new who were to attend the IDA meetings the next day.

To find out more about the seminar visit the following link at the website of the International Disability Alliance:

http://www.internationaldisabilityalliance.org/projects-and-events/seminar-on-shadow-reporting/


Photos from the seminar

Click on the picture to see it in full size.