Representatives of Center for the Independent Living of Persons with Disabilities Serbia, City Electoral Commission, Municipality of Savski Venac and Municipality of Vracar signed on December 28, 2018, the Agreement on Understanding, in which they agreed to cooperate during future activities to improve all forms of accessibility for polling stations and public facilities, including physical accessibility, as well as functional accessibility for persons with visual and hearing impairment, as well as other forms of disability, with full commitment to the implementation of agreed activities and the achievement of related common goals.

Center for the Independent Living Serbia marked December 3rd December in cooperation with the Association of Paraplegics of the Macvan region from Sabac through signing contracts with users and personal assistants – this was the official  start of personal assistance service in Sabac within the framework of a project ralised by CIL Serbia and financed by the EU through the UNDP program.

5 October 2018, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs

Since 1992, the United Nations International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPD) has been annually observed on 3 December around the world. The theme for this year’s IDPD is “Empowering persons with disabilities and ensuring inclusiveness and equality”. This theme focuses on the empowering persons with disabilities for the inclusive, equitable and sustainable development envisaged in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The 2030 Agenda, pledging to “leave no one behind,” is an ambitious plan of action of the  international community towards a peaceful and prosperous world, where dignity of an individual person and equality among all is applied as the fundamental principle, cutting across the three pillars of the work of the United Nations: Development, Human Rights and Peace and Security. It is critical to ensure, in this regard, the full and equal participation of persons with disabilities in all spheres of society and create enabling environments by, for and with persons with disabilities.

The 2030 Agenda places great importance on issues related to sustainable urbanization, particularly in Goal 11: make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. There can be no sustainable development without sustainable urban development. The UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III), held in Quito, Ecuador in 2016, recognized the importance of adopting a smart-city approach that makes use of opportunities from digitalization, clean energy and technologies, as well as innovative transport technologies, thus providing options for inhabitants to make more environmentally friendly choices and boost sustainable economic growth and enabling cities to improve their service delivery.

This year, the Secretary-General of the United Nations is launching a first-ever flagship report on disability and development UN Flagship Report on Disability and Development | 2018 – Realizing the SDGs by, for and with persons with disabilities, The Report provides an evidence base for disability-inclusive policy-making, implementation and monitoring and evaluation of an inclusive, accessible and sustainable global development agenda.

The commemoration of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities at UN Headquarters will bring together Member States, UN entities, Mayors, national and local policy makers, civil society organizations, academic institutes and organizations of persons with disabilities to discuss the way forward for inclusive, equitable and sustainable development, in conjunction with the launch of this Secretary-General’s Flagship Report on Disability and Development to be issued as part of the commemoration of the Day.

Balkan Independent Disability Network (BIDF) and the Office of the OSCE for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) are organizing Regional Conference on Participation of Disabled People in Politics and Elections, in Belgrade, October 16 and 17 at the Zira Hotel.

 According to the World Health Organization, there are around one billion people with disabilities in the world. Persons with disabilities are generally not sufficiently represented in the elections, in democratic structures or decision-making processes across the OSCE region.

 This conference will serve as a platform for raising awareness about the low participation of persons with disabilities in political and electoral life in Western Balkans, and for the identification of various measures that will make democratic institutions and decision-making processes more inclusive for people with disabilities.

 This event will be attended by members of the academic community, representatives of organizations of persons with disabilities and experts from other international organizations, including the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Center for Independent Living organised  training for personal assistants in Belgrade 25-27 of September.

There were candidates for PAs from Belgrade, Leskovac and Nis.

This was 40th training since CIL’s accreditation for this kind of education. 

CIL Serbia organised workshop within the BIDF Project, Partnership – aims and challenges, in Belgrade on June 22. This workshop gathered representatives from National network of DPOs and relevant  Ministries.

There were representative from four national Unions (Para/Quadriplegia, Autism, Blind and CILs), as well as disabled MP in Serbian Assembly and representatives from Ministry for labor, employment, veterans and social protection, Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-government, Office for Human and Minority rights and Comissioner for Equality protection . Aleksandra Vesic-Antic facilitated the workshop.

Photos on www.facebook.com/cil.srbija  

Aleksandra