Slobodan Milojkovic, member of Center for Independent Living, Jagodina branch, was awarded with October award of Jagodina municipality.
He won this award as successfull sportsman with disability.
Congratulations!

CIL trainers, Svetislav Marjanovic and Dimitrije Gligorijevic delivered the training for Fund for Micro Development, in Belgrade on 10th of October 2007. Fund for Micro Development is local organisation oriented to micro – financing, derived from Danish Refugee Council as a tool for implementation the program of micro – crediting for refugees, internaly displaced persons and local citizens and now for the first time they will start working with persons with disabilities. This training has had basic character and covered the following topics: models of disabilities, obstacles, international documents on disability rights and language of disability.

International Day of Poverty Reduction will be celebrated in National Assembly of Serbia on Wednesday, 17^th of October. Theme of this year is “Youth and poverty” and within the marking of the Day will be the action “Stand up and talk against poverty and inequality”.The burden of poverty especially hits young people who belong to marginalized groups: refugees, displaced persons, persons with disabilities, Roma people. Poverty is spread in rural area. Young women are more often in risk of poverty, especially those who suffered violence and single mothers. Serbia is still the only country in Europe without the strategy for better status and living conditions for young people. That strategy is in process due to initiative Ministry for Youth and Sport.

After years of being weakened in the courts, Congress is coming to the rescue of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the bipartisan civil rights protections signed into law in 1990. This vital legislation will restate and clarify the intent of Congress in order to keep the promise of the ADA. Please take action now to encourage members of Congress to sign-on and pass this legislation which was drafted with the support of a broad coalition of disability organizations.  

Contact Congress

Click the link above to tell your members of Congress to support the ADA Restoration Act.

Sign the Petition

Click the link above to show your support for passage of the ADA Restoration Act. We will distribute the petitions to Congress and the media.

Tell Your Story

Click the link above to tell your story about disability discrimination, how the ADA has helped you or how the promise of the ADA is still unfulfilled. We will share these testimonials with Congress and the media.

Get On the Bus

Click the link above to follow the Road To Freedom: Keeping the Promise of the ADA, our year-long, cross-country bus tour promoting the restoration of the ADA.   Freedom bus Check out the tour schedule, read the blog and view photos of our journey so far covering more than 20,000 miles, 40 states and more than 60 bus stop events.

BACKGROUND:
Seventeen years ago, Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) with overwhelming bipartisan support. However, in recent years, a number of Supreme Court decisions have significantly reduced the protections available to people with disabilities in employment settings.

Courts are quick to side with businesses and employers, deciding against people with disabilities who challenge employment discrimination 97% of the time, often before the person even has a chance to show the employer treated them unfairly.  

Indeed, courts have created an absurd Catch-22 by allowing employers to say a person is “too disabled” to do the job but not “disabled enough” to be protected by the ADA. People with conditions like epilepsy, diabetes, HIV, cancer, hearing loss, and mental illness that manage their disabilities with medication, prosthetics, hearing aids, etc. — or “mitigating measures” — are viewed as “too functional” to have a disability and are denied the ADA’s protection from employment discrimination.

People denied a job or fired because an employer mistakenly believes they cannot perform the job or because the employer does not want people with disabilities in the workplace are also denied the ADA’s protection from employment discrimination.

As Rep. Steny Hoyer stated when he introduced the ADA Restoration Act of 2007 on July 26, 2007, “the point of the ADA is not disability; it is the prevention of wrongful and unlawful discrimination.” The courts have spent an exorbitant amount of time parsing the question of whether a person is really “disabled,” when the real question is whether the person was treated unfairly on the basis of an irrelevant personal characteristic (disability). Courts do not require people alleging race or sex discrimination under other civil rights laws to first prove their race or gender – instead, they look at whether race or gender was the basis for the adverse action. Under the ADA, however, before a court will hear a person’s discrimination claim, the person is currently required to first prove in excruciating detail how “disabled” he or she is. This is not what Congress intended in the original ADA. 

Instead, as Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner said when he joined Mr. Hoyer in the introduction of the ADA Restoration Act of 2007, this bill helps ensure that the ADA takes its rightful place among other civil rights laws, and “will force courts to focus on whether a person has experienced discrimination ‘on the basis of disability,’ rather than require individuals to demonstrate that they fall within the scope of the law’s protection” at all. That was what Congress originally intended – to focus a spotlight on unfair discrimination against people with a broad range of disabilities. 

When Congress passed the ADA, when President George H. W. Bush signed the law, and when Attorney General Dick Thornburgh promulgated regulations to implement the law, the intent of the ADA was crystal clear – the law was intended to apply to everyone who experienced discrimination on the basis of disability, not just those with severe disabilities. Congress did not expect its legislative history, and prior case precedent, to be ignored.   

ADA Watch/NCDR joins CCD, NCIL and the larger disability rights community and urges Congress to pass the ADA Restoration Act (H.R. 3195), restoring the original intent of Congress to ensure the right to be judged based on performance, harmonizing the ADA with other civil rights laws, and requiring the courts to interpret the law fairly.       

United Nations, 2 October – India and Gabon have ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, bringing the number of ratifications to seven – 13 short of the number that will bring the Convention into effect.

Seven countries – Cambodia, Gabon, Madagascar, Mauritius, Montenegro, Slovakia and Swaziland – signed the Optional Protocol to the Convention, bringing the number of signatories to 66. The Protocol, which has been ratified by three countries, will come into force when the Convention does, and after 10 ratifications or accessions.

The United Nations, and more than 600 million people with disabilities around the world will be watching the 25th of September, 2007, when nations gather at the 62nd session of the UN General Assembly. This day will offer an opportunity for nations to ratify any treaties that they have signed but not yet put into force–including the UN Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

The CRPD declares the rights of disabled people to be protected from discrimination, exploitation, and abuse; the rights of people with disabilities to an education access to their physical environment and to information and communication; and describes many other basic human rights. Special attention is given to protecting the rights of women and children with disabilities.Although 102 nations have signed the disability rights treaty, it cannot legally take force until at least 20 of these nations take the next step and formally ratify it.

Signing a convention (treaty) merely indicates a country’s agreement with the main idea of the convention: signing the convention without ratifying it does not legally bind the country to follow what the treaty says. A country is only legally bound to obey a convention when it ratifies the convention.

So far, only 6 countries have fully ratified the CRPD: Croatia, Cuba, Hungary, Jamaica, Panama and Namibia. Disability rights advocates are hoping that enough countries will follow suit this September 25 to put the CRPD into legal force within the next few days.

Whether or not this occurs, however, advocates will need to continue pushing for their own countries to sign, ratify, and fully implement the disability rights treaty before all disabled citizens can fully enjoy their rights as described in the CRPD.

Places to visit accessible to persons with disabilities: 

Botanical garden “Jevremovac” and especially visit of Japanese garden – visits on 29/30 of September. 

Natural Museum, Mali kalemegdan 5 Gallery, exhibition and lectures on “Hidden life of rivers”, from 21- 23 od September. 

Etnographical Museum, exhibition “Rivers of Serbia and their importance” University Library “Svetozar Markovic”, exhibition of photographs “Fortress on Danube”, from 20 until 30 of September. 

St. Sava Temple, exhibition of Gospel of Miroslav, from 20 until 23 of September. 

Museum of Vuk Karadzic and Dositej Obradovic, Dositej’s collection for Blind people, from 20 until 23 of September. 

Galery  of  Fresquee, from 20 until 23 of September. 

Institute Cervantes, Exhibition of Flemish graphics from National Museum collection, from 20 until 30 of September. 

Cultural Centre Galery, exhibition of photographs from Child Cultural Centre until 23 of September.  

Plato in front of Natural Museum, Mali kalemegdan 5, Association of Citizens “Our children”: TCC (Tradition, Customs, Culture), interactive painting workshops for children with developmental disorders. 

Zemun Municipality, exhibition “Rivers, nature, people” of students from Zemun special schools and residents of Home for PWDs, 28 of September.   

Council of Europe organizing the Conference on Disability Action Plans 2006-2015 in Zagreb from 19^th until 21^st of September.

Workshop Rapporteur from one of the sessions will be Mr. Damjan Tatic, CIL member and UNDP Consultant for UN Convention implementation.

There are no human rights to which persons with disabilities do not lay claim. Upon this foundational principle at our last World Assembly in Sapporo, Disabled Peoples’ International called upon Member States of the United Nations to adopt of a specific international human rights treaty on the rights of persons with disabilities.

Now, celebrating our achievements as we also celebrate DPI’s quarter century of engagement in the struggle for human rights for all disabled people, the time has come to prepare ourselves and our allies for the future and our participation in ratification and implementation of this historic new treaty. We the 2700 people of DPI gathered here in Seoul for our 7th_x0081_@World Assembly, declare that the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as a core international human rights treaty, shall be the foundation for all laws, policies and practices addressing the rights of persons with disabilities. Therefore we call on:

• All Governments, including the Republic of Korea, to move swiftly and with conviction to sign and ratify the Convention, so that it may enter into force by December 13th, 2007.
• All States Parties to vigorously uphold their treaty obligations, working with us to breathe life into the words of the Convention, so that its vision may be reflected in the everyday lives of all people with disabilities.
• All international human rights bodies and mechanisms to engage people with disabilities, so that the standards set by the Convention are fully reflected in their work.
• All UN agencies to actively include disability and people with disabilities in their programming, so that the international cooperation they promote furthers the objectives of the Convention.
• All National Human Rights Institutions to promote awareness, knowledge of and compliance with the Convention, so that national–level implementation may become a reality.
• All Development Agencies to fully utilize the Convention as a tool in achieving the Millennium Development Goals, so that all people with disabilities may benefit equally from full and sustainable development.
• All members of Civil Society to commit to Convention ratification and implementation, so that we may work in partnership to achieve our common goal of a just and equal society for all.
• All our sisters and brothers in the struggle for disability liberation to make Convention ratification and implementation a priority in their work, so that together we may finally realize the human rights to which we have always laid claim.

IBM has developed a computer program that can translate the spoken word into sign language and then sign it out using an an animated digital figure, or avatar.

The system, unveiled on Wednesday, could pave the way for commercial technology that allows presenters or educators to give lectures that can be accessible to the deaf when no live sign language interpreter is available.

Developed at IBM labs in Hursley, England, SiSi uses British Sign Language (BSL), which an estimated 55,000 people in the U.K. use as their first language, the company said.Andy Stanford-Clark, IBM Hursley’s master inventor, said the technology has the potential to make life easier for the deaf community by providing automatic signing for television, radio, the internet and voicemail transcription when using mobile devices.

IBM cautions that the Say It Sign It (SiSi) system is still a prototype and is not yet available commercially, though IBM expects to expand the product to use other sign languages..SiSi first converts the spoken word into text using speech recognition software and then converts those words into sign language, which are then displayed by an onscreen avatar.

The use of a character, instead of text as used in close captioning, allows deaf users to see the words in a visual manner more familiar to them.

List of Ratifying States

Total number of Ratifications: 4

* Denotes Ratification of both Convention and Optional Protocol

Jamaica (30 March 2007)
Hungary (20 May 2007)*
Panama (7 August 2007)* 

Croatia (15 August 2007) *

• ENIL organizes third edition of Strasbourg Freedom Drive.
• More than 125 disabled people from more than 10 European countries will participate in a rally for their rights to the European Parliament.
• They will also meet MEPs and the Disability Intergroup.

 From September the 4^th until the 6^th, more than 125 disabled citizens and their personal assistants from Germany, Norway, Ireland, Sweden, UK, Bulgaria, Belgium, Italy, France and Spain will participate in the third edition of Strasbourg Freedom Drive. This event is organized by the European Network on Independent Living (ENIL) and the Center for Independent Living Carmichael House (Dublin). The Strasbourg Freedom Drive is part of an overall strategy to empower people with disabilities across Europe. It is an opportunity for people with disabilities from all European countries to join together and converge on the European Parliament in Strasbourg, where they will meet MEPs of different countries, the Disability Intergroup of the European Parliament, and representatives of other key EU institutions. Freedom Drivers will also rally to the Parliament where they will meet with Mr. Richard Howitt, President of the Disability Intergroup. Freedom Drivers will demand UN Convention ratification both by the European Commission and Member States; a continuation of prior goals of deinstitutionalisation and the establishment of a personal assistance system; encourage co-operation between the Commission and the Member States; mainstreaming Disability in Policy Formulation; and full Participation of People with Disabilities. It is essential for Freedom Drive 2007 that Independent Living remains central in the disability policies of the EU and that 5% of EU development funding goes to disabled people in developing countries. As ENIL President, Bente Skånsgard, states “We want to be sure that these demands are implemented and are not just rhetorical policies.”