There is one glaring omission to increasing efforts to protect the rights of people with disabilities globally. The United States is one of the few developed nations that has not ratified the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
The US Business Leadership Network, an organization founded to help business drive performance by leveraging disability inclusion in the workplace, supply chain and marketplace, and Fair360, formerly DiversityInc are calling on business owners and executives to sign a letter appealing to the U.S. Senate to ratify the CRPD. Committee hearings began this week with a vote expected later this month.
While the U.S. would not commit to anything beyond laws that are already on the books, ratification of the CRPD would reaffirm the government’s support for people with disabilities. “What the convention endeavors to do,” said Don MacKay, chairman of the committee that negotiated the treaty, “is to elaborate in detail the rights of persons with disabilities and set out a code of implementation.”
