Ambassador for Human Rights: Luis Benigno Gallegos

By Joan Leotta

For nearly 20 years, Americans with disabilities have enjoyed a significant increase in rights and accessibility in their local communities thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act. But what about the world's 650 million people with disabilities? A committee of the United Nations, headed by Luis Benigno Gallegos, Ecuador's Ambassador to the United States, convened in 2002 to grant the world's disabled citizens more. Thanks to Gallegos' leadership efforts, the UN's Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities now promises people with disabilities in 139 countries dignity, autonomy, equality, and solidarity with all citizens.

Human rights concerns have long marked Ambassador Gallegos' 40-year foreign service career. In 2002, Gallegos began to particularly focus on people with disabilities when he chaired the UN's Ad Hoc Committee on a Comprehensive and Integral International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. That dedication resulted in the passage of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Says Ambassador Gallegos, “Society has to recognize that it should not exclude persons with disabilities. This is a very important group of people, representing ten percent of the world's population.”

Rationale

The Ad Hoc Committee began with a realization that many countries do not do enough to validate their citizens with disabilities. And as the population ages, the number of people with disabilities will increase. “These are people who can contribute much to society,” Gallegos says. But beyond that, people with disabilities have met obstacles head-on. Society in general can learn “a lesson in how to overcome challenges” from disabled peers, Gallegos asserts.

All members of the human family should have what the Convention offers people with disabilities: access to health care, employment, and education; the right to participate in society by receiving accessible information and voting; and the opportunity to take part in cultural activities. In addition, the Convention has the potential to enforce universal design requirements for accessible buildings and products.

As the Ambassador points out, there is no equity in a society unless all groups have more than simple protection under the law. The movement to true equality, he maintains, "goes well beyond national barriers."

The United Nations Convention

The Convention espouses four key tenets:

the dignity of each individual, who is deemed to be of inestimable value because of inherent self-worth, not for being economically or otherwise “useful”;

the concept of autonomy or self-determination, based on the presumption of a capacity for self-directed action and behavior. This autonomy requires individuals to be at the center of all decisions affecting them;

the inherent equality of all regardless of difference; and

the ethic of solidarity, which requires society to sustain the freedom of the person with appropriate social supports.

Writing the Convention and shepherding it to passage was not an easy process. Gallegos quickly realized that there had to be a dialogue between diplomats and the commissions on human rights and development from a variety of countries. The first task? To determine how to define disability and its scope. “At the first meeting we all had to pool our knowledge,” Gallegos recalls.

The group quickly realized that “we needed the contribution, guidance, and expertise of people with disabilities.” Gallegos describes those early tasks:

From the beginning we had meetings on how to approach the subject from a variety of angles. There are so many types of disabilities and illnesses—permanent and temporary, visible and invisible—to consider. We had to structure definitions that were as complex as necessary but that could be understood easily. We also needed to create bridges between government and non-governmental organizations and civil society at large. Fortunately, the cooperation was extraordinary.

When it was time to bring the Convention to a vote, Gallegos did not expect any opposition. “Boy was I wrong!” he recalls. Even in this day and age, “I found it surprising that I had to convince many that we needed such a convention,” he relates. “Some countries had to be convinced to change their orders to their delegations in order to help this pass. Societies that do not protect the rights of their historically vulnerable citizens—those with disabilities, minorities, women and children—are not going to be ready for the future.”

Of his work with the U.N. Committee on Disabilities, Gallegos remarked, "I learned that a noble cause can overcome whatever barriers and misunderstandings exist among the world's nations, its civil societies, their nonprofit organizations, and the stakeholders represented by those organizations. Thanks to the combined efforts of these groups, we reached a consensus that became the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.”

From Passage to Ratification

The document that emerged for signature by the UN's 192 members protects the rights of people with disabilities in general and in the workplace. When Gallegos' home nation of Ecuador ratified the Convention in April 2008, the document already had the force of law in 19 other countries. The Convention became not only the first comprehensive human rights treaty of the twenty-first century, but also one of the fastest to enter into force.

As of this writing (April 2009), 139 countries not including the United States have signed the Convention and fifty have ratified it. (An optional protocol that provides enforcement power was passed on December 13, 2006.) “It is our hope that President Obama will lead the U.S. to become a signatory country,” says Gallegos.

Ecuador's role

Although Gallegos notes that the Convention's work “goes beyond all national barriers,” he takes pride in the leadership role that his country is taking in disability rights. Gallegos notes that Ecuadorian Vice President Lenin Moreno Garces is the highest ranking person in any world government today with a disability. When Ecuador signed the Convention in April 2008, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, the United Nation's representative from Ecuador at the time, maintained that the ratification reflected the country's prevailing domestic policy and commitment to that segment of the population. Noting that out of Ecuador's 13 million citizens, 1.6 million are disabled, Espinosa said that Ecuador was going beyond Convention mandates to make significant public investment in medical and social services, job creation, and access to high-level education for people with disabilities.

At the 2008 National Council on Independent Living Conference, Ambassador Gallegos, who served as keynote speaker, accepted an award on behalf of his country. At that time he said: "I am very proud that Ecuador received the Franklin Delano Roosevelt award. It's the first country in Latin America to receive it. I think that demonstrates a leadership role of Ecuador in Latin America…Our societies must change in order to integrate people with disabilities into the mainstream of societies and make them active participants in our societies.”

Personal contributions to global disability rights

As a result of his and by extension Ecuador's, pivotal role in the UN Convention process, Gallagos has received numerous honors including Justice for All, an award given on Capitol Hill in July 2007 for his "tremendous activism, advocacy and U.N. Convention work and leadership to protect the rights of people with disabilities." The Ambassador considers it all in a day's work: “I have participated in a variety of groups that fundamentally foster human rights on an international level and have an impact on the lives of many people.”

Despite the demands on his time as head of Ecuador's delegation to the United States, Gallegos continues to serve in an honorary capacity on projects that promote the rights of people with disabilities. One such project is his membership in the Global Universal Design Commission, a not-for-profit corporation established to develop accessibility standards for buildings, products and services. Ambassador Gallegos' participation in the inaugural meeting of the Global Universal Design Commission, on May 30, 2008, brought international attention to the group's mission.

Gallegos also serves as Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on an International Convention on the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities for the National Spinal Cord Injury Foundation. Asked often to speak on disability issues in the United States, he tries to make time for such engagements whenever he can. “I think,” says Gallegos, “that disability is something that in the past people were fearful about: they do not like to address it and put it in back of their minds. But society has to recognize that it should not exclude persons with disabilities. These people are an important group and one which can make important contributions to society.”

Visit the United Nation's UN Enable Web site at http://www.un.org/disabilities/.

Edited by Mary-Louise Piner.