From Awareness to Action

As the world prepares for the Second World Summit for Social Development, ensuring that crisis response and climate action is inclusive of persons with disabilities is more urgent than ever. Both the preamble to the Paris Agreement and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recognize that persons with disabilities are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change. These disparate impacts of climate change for the disability community are not inevitable; rather, they result from the failure of climate adaptation and disaster risk readiness policies to strengthen the adaptive capacity of persons with disabilities and learn from them.

For its part, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), particularly through Article 11, urges states to advance disability-inclusive climate adaptation and mitigation measures in order to fulfill their interrelated obligations under this treaty. Although the CRPD does not expressly refer to "climate change," HPOD has argued in submissions to both the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights that the CRPD's provisions, as well as the evolutive guidance issued from the CRPD's treaty body, should inform judges' efforts to determine the scope of states' duties to address the differential effects of climate change on persons with disabilities.

Sponsored by the Permanent Mission of Austria to the United Nations, and co-sponsored by the Permanent Missions to the United Nations of Uzbekistan and the Commonwealth of Dominica, the Zero Project, Human Rights Watch, and HPOD, this side event held during 18th Session of the Conference of States Parties to the CRPD (COSP18) will explore innovative approaches to embedding accessibility, disability-inclusive policies, and community-driven solutions into climate and crisis response efforts. Experts, advocates, and policymakers will discuss strategies to raise public awareness and drive meaningful change—primarily through collaboration centred around the sharing of good practices—ensuring that persons with disabilities are recognized as key contributors to resilience, sustainability, and social development in the face of climate and crisis response challenges.

Participate via the event livestream on UN Web TV.

Moderator

• Thomas Butcher, Senior Advisor, Zero Project

Speakers

• Professor Michael Ashley Stein, Co-founder & Executive Director, HPOD
• Emina Ćerimović, Associate Disability Rights Director, Human Rights Watch
• Nurilla Abdullayev, Minister Counsellor, Deputy Permanent Representative of Uzbekistan to the United Nations
• H.E. Dr. Philbert Aaron, Permanent Representative of the Commonwealth of Dominica to the United Nations
• Stefan Pretterhofer, Deputy Permanent Representative of Austria to the United Nations

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