Women's Views on News |
| Disability in the EU: local inclusion wanted Posted: 22 Apr 2016 02:54 AM PDT
According to the United Nations, 1 in 5 women worldwide has a disability, and the prevalence of disability is actually higher among women than men – 19.2 per cent versus 12 per cent. Yet women and girls with disabilities remain at the margins of decision-making and progress and gender equality. In order to empower women with disabilities, it is necessary to promote collaboration and work together with the women's movement on topics of common interest. By International Women's Day 2016, Europe was at a stage where although significant efforts had been made in terms of gender equality and empowerment of women in society, but discrimination against women still exists and Europe often fails to include the rights of women in its political and economic decision-making. And women with disabilities have to deal with a double challenge – and are even more invisible in society. On this year’s International Women's Day, the European Disability Forum (EDF) called on the European Union (EU) to take measures to promote the rights of women and girls with disabilities in its policies. The European Disability Forum is an independent NGO that represents the interests of 80 million Europeans with disabilities – created in 1996 by its member organisations to make sure decisions concerning disabled people are taken with and by disabled people, and run by persons with disabilities and their families. The EDF is calling on the EU to initiate concrete projects to achieve their empowerment and full participation in all fields of life and to support the setting up of organisations, networks and groups of women with disabilities. The EDF welcomed the European Commission's proposal made on 4 March 2016 for the European Union to ratify the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention, a comprehensive international treaty on combating violence against women and domestic violence, as that was one of the recommendations that the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD) submitted to the EU in September 2015 and will be hugely beneficial to all women. And the EDF is calling on the EU to ensure the equal participation of all women with disabilities in political and public life, including the right to vote and be elected. Currently 75 per cent of the members of the parliaments in the EU member states are men – or only 25 per cent of parliamentarians are women. Women, including women with disabilities, are still underrepresented in political and public life; in the European Parliament, two female MEPs have disabilities. Clearly much work remains to be done to strengthen the political participation and leadership of women, including of women with disabilities. The EDF’s board meeting in Amsterdam last month discussed, among other issues, the role of municipalities in implementing the UN CRPD, the situation of refugees and migrants with disabilities and the upcoming UK referendum on EU membership. At a conference entitled "From global to local: Building inclusive local communities with an EU perspective" Emmanuelle Grange, head of the unit for Disability and Inclusion with the European Commission, emphasised that de-institutionalisation is a top priority for the European Commission and that they count on the contribution of local organisations for persons with disabilities. She also highlighted the importance of the upcoming EU Social Pillar, and the intensity of discussions in Council on the European Accessibility Act. Representatives of municipalities, local organisations of persons with disabilities and the European Network on Independent Living (ENIL) discussed how the UN CRPD has been implemented at regional and local levels, and how persons with disabilities have been included. Throughout the discussion, the need for the simultaneous implementation of the UN CRPD at all levels, European, national and regional and local, and the meaningful involvement and participation of organisations of persons with disabilities, was emphasised. Clear leadership at central level, coordination between levels, common strategies, strong legislation and standardisation are essential. And the EDF and its members adopted a resolution calling on the European Institutions to adopt guidelines and provide support to the local and regional authorities on the implementation of the UN CRPD, and to involve persons with disabilities and their representative organisations in the process. Ana Peláez, chair of EDF Women's Committee said: "Promoting the human rights of women and girls with disabilities is at the core of EDF's work, in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). "The 8 March," she continued, "is a day to celebrate what women have achieved throughout recent years. "However, it's also a day to raise awareness about women with disabilities in the EU."  |
| Posted: 22 Apr 2016 02:36 AM PDT
A report from the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) released earlier this year set out the dangerous impact air pollution is currently having on our nation’s health. Around 40,000 deaths a year were linked to outdoor air pollution. The report, ‘Every breath we take: the lifelong impact of air pollution‘, said that the harm from air pollution is not just linked to short term episodes but is a long term problem with lifelong implications. The report, Vanessa Amaral-Rogers wrote in the Ecologist at the time, gave examples from right across an individual’s lifespan during pregnancy – from a baby’s first weeks in the womb – through to the years of older age. And it put forward a number of proposals regarding what must be done if we are to tackle the problem of air pollution. These included: Putting the onus on polluters. Polluters must be required to take responsibility for harming our health. Political leaders at a local, national and EU level must introduce tougher regulations, including reliable emissions testing for cars; Local authorities need to act to protect public health when air pollution levels are high. When these limits are exceeded, local authorities must have the power to close or divert roads to reduce the volume of traffic, especially near schools; Monitor air pollution effectively. Air pollution monitoring by central and local government must track exposure to harmful pollutants in major urban areas and near schools. These results should then be communicated proactively to the public in a clear way that everyone can understand; Quantify the relationship between indoor air pollution and health. We must strengthen our understanding of the key risk factors and effects of poor air quality in our homes, schools and workplaces. A coordinated effort is required to develop and apply any necessary policy changes; Define the economic impact of air pollution. Air pollution damages not only our physical health, but also our economic wellbeing. We need further research into the economic benefits of well-designed policies to tackle it; Lead by example within the NHS. The NHS is one of the largest employers in Europe, contributing 9.1 per cent of the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP). The health service must no longer be a major polluter; it must lead by example and set the benchmark for clean air and safe workplaces. In turn, this action will reduce the burden of air-pollution-related illness on the NHS. That report came out on 23 Febraury. Faced with ‘this barrage of alarming evidence‘ of around 40,000 deaths a year linked to outdoor air pollution, what did the Chancellor George Osborne and the Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin do? asked clean air campaigner Donnachadh McCarthy. Writing in the Ecologist earlier this week, McCarthy said: ‘Unbelievably, instead of taking constructive action to clean our air by encouraging walking and cycling, and banning the most polluting diesel vehicles, they appear to have handed Britain’s air quality policies over to the polluters themselves – sacrificing our health and our children’s futures to short term profits for the fossil fuel industry, motor manufacturers and road-builders’. The government’s retrogressive actions on pollution, McCarthy continued, include: Increased taxes on cleaner cars and reduced taxes on more polluting cars; Accepting Department for Transport (DfT) proposals to close down local street pollution monitoring; Lobbying the EU to weaken pollution testing standards after the VW scandal; Refusing to allow Transport for London (TfL) to regulate taxi numbers in London despite taxi numbers in London soaring above 100,000; Osborne slashing the already miniscule funding for cycling investment to a tiny pathetic 6 per cent of the sum Dutch are spending, while allocating billions more to road-building; Osborne cutting fuel duty at every single budget despite oil prices having fallen by over a third since 2012. Refusing to reduce speed limits to 60 mph on the M1 and M3 to help reduce frequency of EU pollution levels being breached; Proposed raising the speed limit on motorways to 80 mph; Breaking EU road pollution law safety limits since 2010; being found guilty of breaking EU pollution directive by UK Supreme Court in 2015; and planning for London to continue to break EU pollution limits until 2025; Planning for other major UK cities to continue to break EU pollution limits until 2030 among them Birmingham and Leeds; Lobbying the EU to dilute the road pollution laws that it is breaking; and Extending first MOT requirement from 3 to 4 years, thus enabling faulty polluting vehicles to be undetected on the roads for yet another year. Which is why grassroots campaign group Stop Killing Cyclists is staging a Gas-Mask Die-In outside the London headquarters of the Department for Transport on Horseferry Road, on 27 April from 5pm – 6.30pm. You can come too. All are welcome: cyclists, parents, pedestrians, taxi and bus drivers – yes, even drivers – the elderly and asthmatics Protesters are asked to bring children’s dolls and teddy bears to represent the children whose lungs are being stunted for life or to bring gas masks if they have them or disposable pollution masks. Cyclists are asked to bring their bikes, parents their kids, asthmatics their inhalers. The #PollutionProtest protest is calling for: Fair funding for cycling: Nationally invest £15 billion in a national physically protected cycle network over the next 5 years. In London invest 10 per cent of the Transport for London (TfL) budget by 2020 in safer cycling infrastructure and a similar investment in all major English cities; Allow city councils and TfL to limit the total number of private hire vehicles in their cities and promote the usage of zero-emission pedicabs with legal pedicab stands etc. The banning of all non-zero emission private cars from cities on days where pollution levels are predicted to rise above EU safety levels; The banning of all diesel powered vehicles in city centres within 5 years; The banning of all fossil-fuel powered vehicles from being within city centres within 10 years; The instigation of a programme of regular car-free days in England’s major cities, along the model of Paris; Stop the killing of children – set up a national multi-billion-pound programme to convert residential communities across Britain into living-street Home Zones with an end to dangerous polluting through-routes; Stop the killing of pedestrians – establish a national programme to fund of pedestrianisation / cyclisation of our city, borough and town centres, including the nation’s high-street – Oxford Street. Cities are for living in, not being poisoned to death in. “How much more evidence do we need that pollution from diesel is killing us and costing the country billions in health and other costs?” the Green Party’s Transport spokesperson, Caroline Russell, asked when the report was released. “The government must act now,” she continued. "We have to invest in alternatives to car use and ownership so that people have access to affordable and convenient transport options enabling them to avoid being exposed to air pollution and causing it.” Earlier this week Greenpeace activists fitted bespoke emergency facemasks to the Nelson statue 52 metres above Trafalgar Square to highlight need for improved air quality. Nelson was one of 15 statues fitted with masks in the capital, including Oliver Cromwell in the grounds of the Houses of Parliament, Queen Victoria opposite Buckingham Palace, Boudica on Westminster Bridge, Dr Salter’s Daughter, in Bermondsey, and Eros at Piccadilly Circus. Greenpeace campaigner Areeba Hamid said the concerted action was to highlight the need for urgent legislation to tackle air pollution. Figures show that nearly 10,000 people die prematurely from air pollution in London every year. "Monitoring shows that if these statutes were real people, many of them would often be breathing dangerous, illegal air," Hamid said. "Kitting everyone out with face masks is not the solution, instead, we need to see real political action from the new mayor. "We need a clean air zone covering a large part of the city. "Whoever wins the [mayoral] election has to stop the talk and start the action."  |
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