The purpose of the present Convention is to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity.
—from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, an international treaty that came up for ratification in the Senate yesterday. 126 countries have already ratified.
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This is one of the saddest days I’ve seen in almost 28 years in the Senate, and it needs to be a wake-up call about a broken institution that’s letting down the American people.
—Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), after Republican senators yesterday voted down the ratification of the treaty.
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According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, other international treaties pertinent to global health that the Senate has also declined to ratify:
- the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW);
- the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC);
- the Convention on Biological Diversity;
- the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change;
- the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs);
- the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC);
- the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity;
- the Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes (Water Convention);
- the London Protocol on Water and Health to the 1992 Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes; and
- the Ottawa Treaty (Mine Ban Treaty).
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The United States can hardly consider itself a world leader in health when it abandons so many worthy global health efforts. And now, in rejecting the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, we have deserted the cause of those least able to help themselves. A sad day indeed.
