Aotearoa's role in forming the UNCRDP

Olivia Shivas: Kia ora, Robyn, thanks for joining us today as we talk about 3rd of December, and the UNCRPD, which, for all the disabled nerds out there, is the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. And, you were quite involved in forming that massive document so I would love to have a chat about that. Do you want to start by just introducing yourself a little bit?

Robyn Hunt: Kia ora, I'm Robyn Hunt. I am a long-time disability activist, and I mean long time. And my role in the CRPD was because I was a Human Rights Commissioner at the time, the second disabled human rights commissioner. I wasn't a Disability Rights Commissioner, that didn't come until 2011, but I was working as a part-time commissioner, and the convention took up most of my time.

Olivia: Cool, and you are based in Pōneke, is that right?

Robyn: Yes. But I travelled to New York each year for the meetings.

Olivia: How does one person get selected to be part of this group?

Robyn: Well, it doesn't work like that. You send a delegation, and so there were people from disabled people, and people from, the Office for Disability Issues, as it was then, and also government representatives from the mission in New York. So there was a team of us, and there were also other people there who were there as part of other delegations, because this was the first time that there had been NGOs allowed to, be part of the negotiations. It was the first time that the International Group of Human Rights Commissions were part of the negotiations, and of course we had, for the latter part of it, we had, New Zealand diplomat as the chair of the sessions.

Olivia: In terms of the different articles, how do they get selected?

Robyn: Well, there's a sort of a process that they go through when they're setting up conventions, and I'm now having to dig into my memories quite a bit. But, I think that there's quite a lot of negotiation goes on behind the scenes, and then everybody meets together with every country represented, if they choose to be. They all have a seat, and the NGOs, and the set at the side, and the human rights commissions, we had a leading… a leader from the Indian Human Rights Commission who led the negotiations for us. But that… having said that, we all chipped in. As we went along, and there was all kinds of meetings and negotiations that went on in the early mornings and late at night, all of that. There's a standard process, and I… I can't quite remember now how they set up, which… but they're kind of, there's a process that works for the way these things are negotiated.

Olivia: When you say negotiated, what does that actually involve? Is it kind of people putting through their different suggestions, and then discussions on how things are worded?

Robyn: People make statements, so, they make statements of what they want under that. They would say, if they were negotiating a particular article of the convention then people are asked to make a timetable, so you know what's going to be negotiated when, and people will go away and formulate their statements that they want to make.

Olivia: And you mentioned there were some really long days, early mornings, late nights. How are the spoons levels?

Robyn: Oh, well, that was quite interesting. Because New Zealand was highly in support of it, I was part of the government delegation, which was pretty much everybody who was there from New Zealand, apart from people who were there with the NGOs. But I was also part of the Human Rights Commissions, the international body of the Human Rights Commissions, and so we had to meet as well, so I got to go to lots and lots of meetings, but it was great. I mean, it was really interesting.

Olivia: And in terms of bringing together lots of experts in these fields, and I'm guessing a lot of disabled people were there, how… I'm imagining managing different people's disabilities and accessibility requirements. How did that all work?

Robyn: Well, it was a learning curve for the UN. They hadn't done that before, but they made things reasonably physically accessible. I can't tell you about the loos, but I'm assuming there were accessible loos, but probably not enough, as usual, and, and the access to the building had been  managed. We had to… we used one particular entrance that had been made accessible. There was instant real-time captioning of the proceedings on a big screen up the front, which of course I couldn't read, but I know it was there. And there were also sign interpreters, but of course that was difficult too, because although there is international sign language… every country, of course, has its own sign language as well, but the Federation of the Deaf was there, and along with all the big international NGOs, and Robert Martin was there as he was, and other people were there for different NGOs, so there were a few other… one or two other New Zealanders besides the formal government delegation.

Olivia: Yeah, it sounds like it's quite amazing that it got to that point.

Robyn: Well, you got to know everybody as time went on.

Olivia: Yeah.

Robyn: Quite, quite interesting, and you got to understand how certain countries felt on certain issues, too.

Olivia: Were there any issues in particular that, kind of your group or New Zealand were really, strong about?

Robyn: We were quite strong on women. Yeah. Because there were a number of us in the delegation. But it's… it's… honestly, it's asking me, it's 20 years ago, so it's quite hard to remember all of the, who, who said what and when and to whom.

Olivia: And so, once this, you know, the CRPD has been adopted, signed… was it 2007 or 6?

Robyn: Well, it was completed in 2006, so that means the negotiations are agreed on, the state's vote on it, and it becomes, the text is finalised. Then they have to have 20 states to ratify it, and it becomes international law. And then states ratify it as it goes on, and we ratified it in 2008.

Olivia: Right, yeah, yeah. And that moment when it was ratified in Aotearoa, like, how did that moment feel for you?

Robyn: Well, we had a little party. Yeah, so… so the Minister in 2008, when we ratified it, was Ruth Dyson, and we all went… a lot of us who'd been in the delegation went up to her office and had a wee celebration.

Olivia: Oh, cool. As you should. So, I guess, since then, what are some significant changes you've seen with regards to disability rights at Aotearoa since then?

Robyn: Well, I would have to say that progress has been quite slow. In fact, a lot of things happened before the CRPD. So, since then, I mean, we had the Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based care. We have a Disability Rights Commissioner. Meaning a full-time commissioner who's got the title of Disability Commissioner, so that was in… I think it was… 2011, that was Paul Gibson when he was appointed. But I could be wrong. This isn't from memory. And we've had captioning of TV, And audio description for TV, we've got Whaikaha, of course. Oh, and there's the new National Organisation of Disabled Students. We had, originally we had Can Do, which was a sort of everybody, but of… not Can Do, sorry, we had Achieve, which was people working for access and… and students. And, of course, before that, we had Can Do at Vic, which was the students organisation, which took a pretty, pretty important complaint against Victoria to the Human Rights Commissions. But that was all before the CRPD.

Olivia: Mmm.

Robyn: So there was quite a lot, quite a lot of things happened before the CRPD. And when I look at it since, I'm not sure that enough has happened since.

Olivia: Yeah, yeah, I mean, the list you've just, read out to me, it's like a mix of, kind of disabled, disability-led, and… I guess, kind of agency, or government-supported  things.

Robyn: Well Achieve was led by disabled people, because, there were disabled students who were involved, and… and some of the people who were providing disability support services were also disabled. So, there was quite a lot of disabled leadership. Whaikaha, yes, that was probably, I mean, government-led, but I mean, there'd been disability pressure forever for that. The TV and radio. Sorry, the TV audio description and captioning. There'd been huge pressure for that, for that, for years. I mean, it took us a long time to get the deaf relay service, which resulted from a human rights complaint, but that, again, was before… well, it was before the Sign Language Act in 2006, so… So there were quite a few things that happened before the CRPD.

Olivia: How do you rate New Zealand on upholding the UNCPR D?

Robyn: It's quite hard, because the CRPD is quite wide-ranging. It covers most areas of life and I'd say that the areas that it hasn't done well, are things like some of the basics still, which are housing. Just about every form of access you can think about. There's access to health is still an issue. So, yeah, it's the basics that enable people to live with dignity. But having said that, there's been a few areas, and because I've been working in the arts quite a lot for the last, more than 10 years now. There's been progress in the arts with things like audio descriptions, interpreting, and accessible, and also the growth of disabled performers and writers and artists of all kinds. And of course, accessibility policies in Creative New Zealand, and… Which I think is still lacking in a number of other non-arts organisations. So, you know, I think it's very patchy, and I think it's very slow. And I think… I personally am quite deeply disappointed in the lack of the access of any access legislation, because the standard for access for building and environmental access is very old and very dated and really unfit for purpose. And the fact that we are not having You know, that we're not… that we don't have any good standard. I mean, we have… we have standards in terms of digital access, but those are the international standards which we've adopted, which makes sense, because digital access is such an international thing. There's still some considerable way to go in terms of digital access as well.

Olivia: Sometimes it feels like we're making strides when things are… when things do change, and then other ways it's like, ugh, it takes so slow. I mean, why do these things take so slow? It can be so frustrating for our community sometimes. 

Robyn: It's frustrating for our community because we're probably, perhaps need to be more political? But it's slow because  it's like gender. We have deeply embedded ableism in almost every structure and process that you can think about. And a lot of it is unrecognised, both by ourselves and by those who perpetuate it, and people don't like being challenged about it either. I mean, well, they don't anyway, but… but we've also internalised some of that ableism. I remember I used to teach self-advocacy for CCS years and years and years and years ago, and I was really appalled at how people had internalised ableism. I mean, I've internalised it too, because my generation were brought up to be ableist towards ourselves and towards others. So, you know, we all have internalised ableism. And I think we have to… we have to overcome that. But we also have to recognise it when we see it in the systems and structures that surround us and challenge it. You know, with everything we've got. And we also have to work together. We have to learn to work together, and not say my impairment is more important than yours. We work very hard in DPA to pull us all together. And I decided, when I first got involved with the disability community, for a variety of reasons that I wanted to get involved across the board with, I didn't want to just be part of one condition-focused community that I wanted to work across the board, and I've never regretted that. It's been incredibly enriching, and a hell of a lot of fun.

Olivia: What's some of the fun that's happened?

Robyn: Oh, well, we used to have conferences for DPA, and we used to have a lot of fun at those, you know, the usual sort of fun that you have at conferences, and celebrations, and… and… partying and stuff like that. We always had a party at the conference, which was great. And celebrating when we, like, celebrating when we got the Human Rights Act, and celebrating when we got the CRPD, and just working together, and having fun across the board, and working together with people for years and years and years, so you get to know each other there's a lot of joy in that, I think in the disability community, and in the richness of it. And, you know, I always feel that non-disabled people miss out on such a lot, because they don't, experience some of the things that we do, and particularly since I've worked in the arts, I've found the arts have been absolutely amazing. Reading disability writing from here and around the world.

And I’ve seen   lots of other great stuff, like dance and Touch Compass, Lusi’s show that. It's been really amazing and watching some of their videos of their performers. So yeah, and I mean, those give us… means that we can celebrate, so just spending time together and laughing, and having, sort of, in-jokes and crip humour, and it was rather black.

Olivia: Yes, we do have fun.

Robyn: Humour is great fun. And I've found it very enriching working with different groups. Like, when I started, I knew nothing about anybody else, so I had to learn from being told sometimes quite severely by older, disabled people. But I found it very enriching, rather than just working in one community. I belong in the blind, low vision community, although I often felt that I wasn't blind enough to begin with. And that's a whole nother thing, too, about being enough. And are you disabled enough to qualify or to be part of the community? But I think that the disability community as a whole, it's worth it, and I do worry about seeing some groups starting to sort of hive off again, almost as if perhaps the rest of us aren't as good as they are, and I think that can be quite difficult to negotiate.

Olivia: I love what you said about celebrating, and I think that's so important for our communities to be able to celebrate and take those chances. And I've often had people say to me, ‘you know, Olivia, because of your disability, you're actually kind of lucky you've got this automatic in-group you belong to’. It's kind of built-in, if, you know, some people choose to do that or not.

Robyn: Yeah, but we also have to stand together. Like, we all marched when they closed the last institution. There was a big march in Wellington when they closed Kimberley, because we… it's really important that we stand with people with learning disabilities, because often other people don't. And we have to stand with all the different disability groups, because we all have different issues at different times, and none of us, you know, when I first joined the disability community, there was quite a hierarchy, and blokes in chairs were at the top and people with learning disabilities were at the bottom, and they never used to come to. Like, we didn't have People First then, but nobody from what is now People First would come to the conferences. But now, I think, you wouldn't think of having some sort of pan-disability thing without People First having their reps there. So, you know, we've come some distance. And it's not all… I remember at the first DPA conference, the exec were all men, and I stood up in high dudgeon saying that there were no women, and why were there no women?

Olivia: Good on you. I would have loved to see that. I was just thinking, what are some small ways that, as disabled people, we can implement disability rights or activism, or calling our ableism in our everyday life?

Robyn: Well, I think we have to challenge it when we encounter it personally. Like, if I can't read something, and it annoys the hell out of me, I will say so, or if it's difficult to read. I will say… I can't think of a recent example. But I do remember once receiving, when I was working on the press, I got a bill from an ophthalmologist who, and I couldn't read it. And I was… I was so incensed that I… I had a chat to the person who did the Funny Events Diary, and he put it in the diary in the newspaper that somebody had had a bill from a… put a little item in that I'd had the bill I couldn't read.

Olivia: It's ironic from an ophthalmologist.

Robyn: Ophthalmologists, exactly. Well, exactly. They're better than that now. Ophthalmology has certainly improved a lot over the years. Their personal approaches, but, I think you have to challenge it when you find it. You have to ask why you have to say, I can't read this, or I can't get in your door, why can't I get in your door? Don't you want my custom? You know? I mean, I've spent years and years and years complaining about inaccessible websites, and sometimes you have to publicly shame people if they're not gonna… if they just shrug when you say it, you know. We've got lots of social media these days we can do that stuff on, we never use…

Olivia: Yeah, being able to complain is a lot more accessible.

Robyn: Exactly, exactly. And, you know, and stand up for our rights and for each other's rights, educate people, I think, a bit about accessibility.

Olivia: Yeah, yeah. So I guess, looking ahead and, you know, to the future for the next, you know, nearly 20 years of the CRPD, what do you think are some of the priorities for Aotearoa?

Robyn: Well, we do have, you know, we do have a structure and a process for reporting, and it does go to the UN and get reported on, but I think the media don't cover the reports, because they're often quite, you have to pick through them, and you know, because they're written in a way that's quite hard to access, so you have to put in a bit of work reading them and picking through them, and working out what it is they mean, you know, on the ground because they're done in a certain way, but also that support the monitoring of it, so that, the people who do the monitoring get information from people who… who say, well, you know, this is… is or isn't working. And Whaikaha, we have Whaikaha now, so that's one way of accessing the process. But of course, we have the monitoring group, which consists of DPOs, so use the DPOs, go through the DPOs, join the DPOs! The disabled people's organisations, you know, I don't know how many people, belong to their own DPO, I think the Deaf community do, blind community do, to a degree, but also DPA, which anybody with any disability can join, because not everybody has got a group that's part of that. So, you know, get active. Ask questions! You know, connect with the Human Rights Commission, ask them questions too, because we have a Disability Rights Commissioner, so, you know, ask her questions. Ask your DPOs questions, ask them what they're doing and offer to help, because not all of them… they've mostly got small staffs, so… You know, get involved is what I would say.

Olivia: Yeah, for sure, and then that, you know, that's just also, like, one pathway for having more disabled leaders.

Robyn: Well, there's lots there's lots of pathways, too, for leading and whatever form you choose. If you're a working person, or you're wanting a job, then get involved in that. If you're a uni student or a polytech student, then get involved in your student group and if you're an oldie like me, you set up a group called the… we call ourselves the Curmudgeons, but we've got a proper name, which I can never remember.

Olivia: Curmudgeons is much for more fun.

Robyn: It's much more fun, and that's the other thing, we have quite a lot of fun, because we've all known each other for ages.

Robyn: And so, you know, working for the rights of older disabled people is very different from the rights of… or not different from the rights, but our situation is quite different from people who acquire an impairment as they age. We’ll acquire more, but we’ve lived all our lives, most of us, or most of our lives, with an impairment, which is quite different from acquiring one in old age.

Olivia: Mmm.

Robyn: And we’re the first generation, I think, to live long enough to be active in our old age because of the advances in medical care and support and all of the other things, you know, education and at least some of us who've had ACC are better off. That's the other thing that's the inequality that hasn't been dealt with that's a big issue, is the inequality between ACC and everybody else.

Olivia: Mmm.

Robyn: So, you know, that shows in things like healthcare and support.

Olivia: Yeah, yeah, it's still a way to go, yeah. It's been a real pleasure talking to you and just, yeah, really unpacking the CRPD and some of the issues. And also, I just, yeah, I love what you say about how disabled people can just get more involved, you know. We've got already a lot on our plate, but there are little ways that we can still, kind of, call it ableism, and…

Robyn: Everybody can do something.

Olivia: Yeah, yeah.

Robyn: I mean, look at Sir Robert.

Olivia: Mmm.

Robyn: See, Robert ought to be an example to us all. THhe had very little education. He was treated incredibly badly. He was deprived of lots of things that most of us take for granted, being institutionalised. Our work is so important because of people like Sir Robert. Yeah. He should have lived a lot longer. It's because of the life he had as a child that he hasn't. He should still be with us. So, people like Sir Robert, if Sir Robert could do it, given everything that happened to him, then those of us who are fed better can do more.

Olivia: Yeah, we can all play a part, for sure. Yep, cool. Well, thank you so much for your time, Robyn. Is there something you're doing to celebrate 3rd of December?

Robyn: Yes, we are. Wellington, we've always celebrated it, rather than worried too much about the theme. We've used it as our way of publicising disability, or simply enjoying ourselves, and this year, Crip the Lit are doing an event in concert with Verb, who are our good friends, and we are having a gathering of readers, writers reading their work. And the theme is generations. Our disabled ancestors. Who… are you… are you my disabled ancestor?

Olivia: That's so cool! Oh, awesome. Well, yeah, enjoy.

Robyn: We will.

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