Remarks of Gerard Quinn. CDLP Conference on National Disability Strategies 10 December, 2010. Thank you very much Mr President. You are all very welcome to Galway. Its my hometown and I am very proud of it. The Centre for Disability Law & Policy is quite new although many of us go back a long way in the field. The fact that we exist at all is testament to the commitment of President Brown to foster an open, outward-­‐looking, international academy. We do have an ivory tower on campus but we are encouraged to climb over it and connect our knowledge with real challenges faced by real people. We call this ‘scholarship in action’ and to me it represents the true democratic dividend of universities. This week – more than many – we need innovative ideas that can help generate economic activity, employment and maintain social cohesion. We are at a unique moment in time right now. Many of us here today have long called for an internationally legally binding treaty on disability. Just ten years ago these were cries in the wilderness. Now it is a reality. Many of us have worked hard in regional bodies in Africa, Latin America, Asia/Pacific, Europe to ensure that a strong steer for reform was taken at Regional level. This is now a reality – or about to become so throughout the world. In addition to the various Decades of Action we have here in Europe a Council of Europe Action Plan and a truly remarkable EU Strategy launched just last week. 1 And many of us here have striven long and hard to nudge Governments to take the next step in formulating National Strategies or Action Plans on disability. Its plainly not enough to sign up to international and regional instruments – no matter how worthy. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said: ‘general principles do not solve hard cases.” Now there is a temptation to think that they do especially among lawyers and public policy analysts. I say, don’t leave this to the lawyers. As was once caustically said of the lawyers: They take fields of living law, scald their flesh, drain off their blood and reduce them to bones. The bones are neat logical arrangements of principles and rules followed by a somewhat barren commentary. I say resist this temptation of elegance. Instead, put flesh back on the bones of the convention by seeking ways of translating its majestic generalities into domestic reform processes. This is why we are here today – in search of practical bridges that allow the fresh air of the convention through without losing its vitality and to ensure it gets traction where it is needed most – in the small places where people live. I learned this the hard way. I was a member of the Irish Government’s Commission on the Status of Persons with Disabilities. We produced a powerful blueprint for change in 1996. I was naive enough to think that that alone was enough to make change happen. No. If you are interested in change you have to take matters much, much further. We are lucky in Ireland to have pioneered with our National Strategy from 2004. It was one of the first in the world. When we in the Centre resolved to study it with a view to reform we deliberately decided not to navel gaze and confine our analysis to the four corners of the existing strategy -­‐ but to cast the frame much broader –as you will see. 2 So today we have questions and we are on a quest. We are so fortunate to have you with us to travel on this quest in search of some common solutions or at least orientations. To me the central questions are threefold. First, what is the right relationship between national strategies, regional strategies and the implementation of the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities? Many talk in generalities about the need for national strategies to implement the principles of regional strategies and the UN convention. But what exactly is this relationship? It is surely true to say there is one. But it would perhaps be a mistake to see national strategies solely as mirrors of the regional strategies and the convention. Our political, legal and economic systems are so diverse as to make this impossible. Nor is it necessarily a good thing. We must take responsibility for crafting our own solutions. The game-­‐changer is perhaps the cultural shift in the convention. So the first challenge is to map out the right relationship between the international, regional and domestic. And we are so fortunate to have people here today who can enlighten us on that. The second challenge has to do with the national strategies themselves. It is fair to say that the science – really the art – of crafting such strategies is still very much in its infancy. Nevertheless, there are plenty of other strategies about from which we can learn in fields such as children, the elderly and mental health. And there are some very well developed disability strategies in many countries and in all regions of the world – not just in rich countries. So when Dr Eilionoir Flynn started on her two year voyage to study these strategies she found quite a diversity. It was natural therefore to analyse them to try and detect what were the critical success factors that made them – or parts of them successful. Of course this begs a deeper question – what do we mean by a successful national disability strategy? You will all have your own views on this. 3 •
How critically important is consultation? •
What practical processes seem best designed to enable consultation? •
What role does transparancy play? •
What assumptions are we making about the capacity of the civil service to manage change? I don’t mean individual civil servants who often play a heroic role. I mean the system. •
How can we use national strategies as learning devices – devices that are unafraid to acknowledge mistakes and build on them? •
What tools do we need to develop in order to measure success – insofar as the kind of change we seek is measureable. I am speaking here of statistics, indicators and target setting. •
What is the role of independent monitoring? In fact, what are the criteria of independence? •
Eilionoir has come up with ten critical success factors to make a national disability strategy work. She would herself readily admit, that this is not the first –and certainly not the last-­‐ word on the topic. But her analysis marks an important contribution to a debate that has yet to really take place about how to construct and continually refine a successful national disability strategy. Her book will be published by Cambridge University Press in the next few months – and will be in all good bookstores! So the second big question is how do we know success when we see it, how can it be replicated, are there certain critical success facts that should be taken into account when crafting or refining a national disability strategy. The third big question does not squarely arise today – but I suggest it lurks powerfully beneath the surface. If – a big if – we can identify successful strategies and we are reasonably confident as to the reasons why it is successful, then it becomes incumbent on us to share this knowledge and practical skills. If we take the rhetoric of inclusive development seriously and if the adoption and steady and progressive implementation of a national strategy is key then surely one of the best ways of ensuring impact for development aid to enable this flow of know-­‐how to 4 begin. This is most assuredly not to say that ‘we’ or some of us have the answers. Covert normative colonialism has to be avoided at all costs. But I have always through that some sort of programme of exchange to enable talented civil servants in Dublin or Wellington or London as well as active and engaged civil society groups to engage in meaningful dialogue with their counterparts in other parts of the world in crafting national strategies would be a benefit all round. These questions and more affect all us in every country that takes citizenship and inclusion seriously. No strategy stands still and we are here today to offer our insights but, more importantly to learn from you. Clearly our Irish Strategy will need changing if only to respond to the new EU Strategy and maybe the indicators for change that will evolve at EU level and to more explicitly reference the UN convention. Let the dialogue begin. 5