Rights of disabled people in RK

Astana, 20 June 2008, Khabar - Kazakhstan to join UN Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Kazakhstan is set to join the UN
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities with issues of the disabled and prospects of joining the international treaty having topped the agenda at a round-table meeting in Astana.

The UN Convention on the Rights
of Persons with Disabilities was adopted on the 13th of December 2006 with
129 countries signing the treaty with 27 having ratified it so far. The
round-table meeting participants were common in their opinion saying that
Kazakhstan should not put aside joining as over 400 thousand people with
disabilities live in the republic today - 47 thousand of them children.

Saginbek Tursunov, chairman, Human Right Commission under President of RK:
- These people are not fully involved and sometimes they are completely
excluded from social and political life. Young people are now trying to
change the current situation as most of them have the necessary potential
and some of them have education. Sometimes, some of them feel psychological
discomfort and they also suffer from lower self-estimation and face many
barriers.

The Convention is expected to be signed in the near future with specialists
of state bodies and non-governmental organisations studying it now.

Tastemir Abishev, secretary of Commission on human rights under the
President of RK:
- At first it is necessary to study in details and prepare the economic
base, it demands much money. It means that every building, state structures
must be accessible for disabled people, they must freely enter the buildings
and get the transport.

Ahead of Kazakhstan's forth-coming chairmanship of the OSCE, the signing of
the Convention is becoming more topical as thanks to the ratification of the
treaty, the life of the disabled in Kazakhstan will improve to reach world
standards in terms of human rights protection. (Khabar Agency)