7th January 2021
The 3rd of December is the International Day of People with Disabilities. This day the rights of people with disabilities, the fundamental problems and the ways in which they should be addressed will be discussed around the world. Audronė Daukšaitė-Timpė, Senior Adviser at the Office of the Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson, believes that the axis around which all measures should revolve is the dignity of people with disabilities.
How often does the Office of the Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson (the Office) receive complaints about possible discrimination on the ground of disability? What are these complaints about?
Disability is the third most common ground after gender and age on which people turn to the Office to be protected from discrimination. The Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson makes about 50 decisions a year, but receives more than 400 inquiries when people ask for various consultations in writing or over the phone. This number is gradually increasing.
The leading area in terms of the number of inquiries is the area of consumer rights protection. It includes the inaccessibility of public and private services: people with disabilities do not have full access to healthcare, restaurants, transportation, sports, rehabilitation and other services. In the second place we have the area of labor. People with disabilities are discriminated against when they’re not being recruited, when they face inappropriate working conditions that do not take into account the nature of the person’s disability.
When making decisions, the Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson relies not only on the Equal Treatment Law but also on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the Convention). How important is this document?
This convention was adopted to enshrine the fundamental rights of people with disabilities. Its aim is to ensure full access to human rights and freedoms and to promote respect for the inherent dignity of persons with disabilities. Dignity is an essential concept that encompasses the entire document.
The Convention regulates various areas of life in separate articles and covers different groups of people with disabilities. The focus is on children, women and the elderly with disabilities, all of whom have the right to enjoy the human rights and freedoms enjoyed by society.
Are these provisions mandatory in Lithuania?
Of course. This agreement is an international obligation for our country. Lithuania ratified the Convention ten years ago, which means that its provisions have become part of our national law. Unfortunately, although the Convention remains in force until all the rights of people with disabilities enshrined in it have been fully transposed into national law, we still face problems in its implementation. Lithuania chose to ratify the Convention first, then to implement it. This process is still ongoing, so we cannot say that the rights of people with disabilities are fully guaranteed.
The Convention has been in force in Lithuania for a decade. What fundamental changes has it brought?
As I said, this document enshrined dignity as a fundamental value. That is what we must rely on when making any decisions: creating laws or regulations, investigating cases of discrimination, providing services.
The adoption of the Convention changed the very perception of disability. Lithuania is moving from the concept of medical disability (that it is a person’s physical or mental disabilities) to the fact that disability is primarily associated with barriers. People with disabilities interact with the environment and it is the barriers that a person faces in society that defines his or her disability. Society creates or does not create conditions for a person to feel dignified and equal.
What problems do you think are the most relevant at the moment for people with disabilities?
The lack of comprehensive services for families with children or adults with disabilities became particularly apparent during the pandemic. Very often such families feel abandoned, parents raising children with disabilities do not have the opportunity to work properly and rest. It is worth remembering that the day centers were closed during the first wave of pandemic, which put these people in an extremely difficult situation. It is in this area that urgent change is needed.
Another major problem is the integration of people with disabilities into the labor market. We are trying to subsidize job creation, but such a system is working only partially. The attitude of employers should also change in solving this problem. So far, there is a misconception that a person with a disability is a burden in the workplace, that a great deal of effort is required to recruit him. In fact, sometimes small organizational changes are enough for a person with disability to work effectively, to be independent, to benefit their family and society.
The third outstanding issue is the establishment of the concept of inclusive education. Amendments to the Law on Education have already been adopted and will finally enter into force in 2024. From then on, schools will no longer have the right not to accept children with disabilities. Of course, high-quality implementation requires significant funding. Now there is a lack of special educators, teaching assistants. Therefore, fundamental changes are needed in this area.
You have helped the Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson to carry out a number of investigations which have revealed legal loopholes that allow people with disabilities to be legally discriminated against. For example, by selling off parking spaces or by creating a network of electric car charging stations. Are the authorities willing to revise the legal framework on the recommendation of the Ombudsperson?
I could not answer this question unequivocally, but in the Office’s work practice we are certainly faced with a bureaucratic approach to certain problems. Sometimes as we keep making proposals the situation seems hopeless because our proposals are being rejected saying that the existing legislation ensures everything. It is very easy to circumvent existing legislation, so it is clear that regulation is inadequate. Especially the one that is related to construction.
In our study of electric car charging stations (this is a different type of object, so strict construction requirements for accessibility do not apply), we were perplexed by the approach of some municipalities. We were asked, ‘How many people with disabilities driving electric cars have you seen in our town?’. We have had to explain that so far few people in general drive electric cars, but keeping in mind what the European Union’s policy is, we know that there will certainly be more and more such people in the future. Ignoring the needs of people with disabilities is a very narrow attitude.