The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities represents an important innovation in international law. For the first time, states are legally obligated to seek the advice of civil society organizations representing rights-holders in the development of legislation and policies and the monitoring of their implementation. In Nicaragua, however, the civic history of the Sandinista Revolution and civil war has left the local disability movement divided. Disabled war veterans want laws guaranteeing special treatment; self-help groups would rather focus on providing their own services than advocating for new laws. This demonstrates that the success of the CRPD's civil society provisions is as dependent on the local identities and experiences of disabled people as it is on states' adherence to international law.
The concept of citizenship was instrumental to the formation of the disability movement in the West by recasting disability as the denial of equal citizenship of persons with impairments. The disability movement expanded notions of citizenship by not only focusing on nondiscrimination and the protection of civil and political rights, but also the necessity of self-directed, but state-provided, social rights as prerequisite for substantive equality. With the passage of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Western approaches to disability citizenship as state protected rights have globalized. Critical disability scholars are increasingly arguing that Western theories of disability, citizenship, and rights are inappropriate in local contexts in the Global South where weak welfare states are the reality. In such cases, self-help and mutual support are more determinative in the lives of disabled persons than formal rights. I extend these arguments by analyzing three grassroots disability associations in Nicaragua that assist their members achieve citizenship through self-help, service and solidaridad with the community.
The passage of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2006 was hailed by the international disability rights movement as "giving voice" to millions of persons with disabilities around the world. The Convention institutionalizes a role for Disabled Persons Organizations (DPOs) in monitoring their rights. As such, international disability NGOs, networks, and funders have initiated capacity building projects that organize persons with disabilities for advocacy in local communities around the world. A central tension, however, has emerged. While the international disability movement is interested in mobilizing grassroots groups, it is also interested in ensuring that those DPOs reflect global priorities. As such, the international movement is engaged in promoting a very narrow organizational model that corresponds to membership-based, human rights advocacy that conflicts directly with the self-help, social support model that is the basis of many local disabled persons organziations, especially in the developing world. Using qualitative data drawn from fieldwork with grassroots disability associations in Northern Nicaragua, this article shows that international and national organizations have utilized a number of methods, including providing advocacy training, establishing new organizations, formalizing reporting procedures, to bring DPOs together around a human rights advocacy agenda. Program implementation, however, revealed a narrow concern with political empowerment that did not resonate with a local focus on addressing material needs and the instillation of a strict hierarchy and bureaucratic procedures that did not allow local DPOs to deviate from pre-determined, top-down agendas. This case study provides insight into the way global civil society legitimates itself through outreach directed at the grassroots, yet does not allow their full participation in interpreting and implementing their human rights. When local groups resist, it is understood as the result of a lack of consciousness or clear understanding rather than the strategic response of associations embedded in cooperative relationships and focused on addressing the material needs of their members
This study estimated energy, environmental and consumer economic impacts of U.S. Federal residential energy efficiency standards that became effective in the 1988-2006 period, and of energy efficiency standards for fluorescent lamp ballasts and distribution transformers. These standards have been the subject of in-depth analyses conducted as part of DOE's standards rulemaking process. This study drew on those analyses, but updated certain data and developed a common framework and assumptions for all of the products in order to estimate realized impacts and to update projected impacts. It also performed new analysis for the first (1990) fluorescent ballast standards, which had been introduced in the NAECA legislation without a rulemaking. We estimate that the considered standards will reduce residential/ commercial primary energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions in 2030 by 4percent compared to the levels expected without any standards. The reduction for the residential sector is larger, at 8percent. The estimated cumulative energy savings from the standards amount to 39 quads by 2020, and 63 quads by 2030. The standards will also reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by considerable amounts.The estimated cumulative net present value of consumer benefit amounts to $241 billion by 2030, and grows to $269 billion by 2045. The overall ratio of consumer benefits to costs (in present value terms) in the 1987-2050 period is 2.7 to 1. Although the estimates made in this study are subject to a fair degree of uncertainty, we believe they provide a reasonable approximation of the national benefits resulting from Federal appliance efficiency standards.
The UNCRPD is unique amongst international rights instruments because it empowers civil society organizations to represent the rights-bearers themselves—persons with disabilities. As such, DPOs in the Global South have become a major concern for UN agencies and international NGOs who believe that grassroots disability associations need political advocacy training in order to take up their role as rights advocates. These expectations contain implicit assumptions regarding civil society-state relations and the existence of governmental capacity. The authors, however, hypothesize that not all civil societies will fit the rights advocacy model due to the political culture and public resources available within their respective, local communities. Disability movements in Nicaragua and Uruguay are compared and contrasted. In Nicaragua, a disability rights coalition dismisses many international expectations in favor for continuing to follow traditional civil society expectations to provide services. In Uruguay, a long history of high levels of social spending and disability organizing enabled DPOs to successfully advocate for progressive laws. The deaf community, however, decided to implement their own, separate advocacy strategies to ensure a fairer distribution of public resources. The authors conclude that rather than top-down civil society training, the international movement should allow local organizations set their own priorities.
This paper addresses the political acceptability and workability of CDM by and in developing countries. At COP-3 in Kyoto in 1997, the general position among developing countries changed from strong rejection of joint implementation to acceptance of CDM. The outgrowth of CDM from a proposal from Brazil to establish a Clean Development Fund gave developing countries a sense of ownership of the idea. More importantly, establishing support for sustainable development as a main goal for CDM overcame the resistance of many developing countries to accept a carbon trading mechanism. The official acceptance of CDM is not a guarantee of continued acceptance, however. Many developing countries expect CDM to facilitate a substantial transfer of technology and other resources to support economic growth. There is concern that Annex I countries may shift official development assistance into CDM in order to gain carbon credits, and that development priorities could suffer as a result. Some fear that private investments could be skewed toward projects that yield carbon credits.Developing country governments are wary regarding the strong role of the private sector envisioned for CDM. Increasing the awareness and capacity of the private sector in developing countries to initiate and implement CDM projects needs to be a high priority. While private sector partnerships will be the main vehicle for resource transfer in CDM, developing country governments want to play a strong role in overseeing and guiding the process so that it best serves their development goals. Most countries feel that establishment of criteria for sustainable development should be left to individual countries. A key issue is how CDM can best support the strengthening of local capacity to sustain and replicate projects that serve both climate change mitigation and sustainable development objectives.There is support among developing countries for commencing CDM as soon as possible. Since official commencement must await the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, many developing countries support the establishment of an Interim Phase starting in 2000, with possible retroactive crediting once the Protocol enters into force.
"Disability is defined by hierarchy. Regardless of culture or context, persons with disabilities are almost always pushed to the bottom of the social hierarchy. With the advent of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006), disability human rights seemingly provided a path forward for tearing down ableist social hierarchies and ensuring that all persons with disabilities everywhere were treated equally. Despite important progress, the disability human rights project not only remains incomplete, but has often created new hierarchies among persons with disabilities themselves or across the human rights it promotes. Certain groups of persons with disabilities have gained new voices while others remain silenced and certain rights are prioritized over others depending on what states, international organizations, or advocates want rather than what those on the ground need most. This volume was inspired both by the continued need to expose human rights violations against persons with disabilities, but to also explore the nuanced role that hierarchies play in the spread, implementation, and protection of disability human rights. The enjoyment of human rights is not equal nor is the recognition of specific individuals and groups' rights. In order to change this situation, inequalities across the disability human rights movement must be explored. Divided into five parts Who counts as disabled? Political, social, and cultural context Which rights on top, whose rights on bottom? Pushed to the periphery in the disability rights movement Representations of disability and comprised of 34 newly-written chapters including case-studies from the Anglophone Caribbean, Bangladesh, Bosnia-Herzegovina, China, Ghana, Haiti, Hungary, India, Israel, Kenya, Latin America, Poland, Russia, Scotland, Serbia and South Africa, and other countries, this book will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, sociology, human rights law and social policy"--
