India's disability movement urges you to endorse the open letter to the Standing Committee to fix India's Mediation Bill
Vaishnavi Jayakumar
Do consider endorsing and further circulating this open letter from India's disability movement to the Law and Justice parliamentary standing committee.
The 'benevolent' prejudice of the first schedule of the Mediation Bill 2021 effectively sets the movement back in its bracketing of people with high support needs, intellectual disability and mental illness along with minors (and deities!) under the 'disputes or matters not fit for mediation' list of people who will be denied access to this means of seeking justice.
assaults on the validity of our personhood,
attempts to diminish our innate legal capacity
and assumptions that we are in some way lesser than the rest.
Yes, we may need reasonable accommodations. And some of us will be open about our need for support in key life decisions.
But we are not infants, we are not divine. We are citizens (with disabilities).
Endorse the open letter from India's disability movement, allies, allied stakeholders and supporters to the Parliament Standing Committee urging lawmakers to fix the First Schedule of the Mediation Bill and drop the disability references : http://bit.ly/endorsement-form (For institutional endorsements, please DM me)
Open Letter to Parliamentary Standing Committee (Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice) on the Draft Mediation Bill 2021.
It is a case where the left hand does not know what the right is doing. India ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities within months of its coming into force. We have since then replaced our older laws on disability rights and mental health to bring them in harmony with the UN Convention. A common feature in all these legal instruments was the recognition of persons with disabilities as persons before the law — possessed of legal capacity on an equal basis with others. A logical consequence of this position is that whenever any law is made for the people of the country, it will as much extend to persons with disabilities. Any law excluding persons with disabilities would be in breach of both the country’s international commitment and its national laws. Yet the Mediation Bill 2021 has excluded a range of persons with disabilities from the purview of the Mediation law as if to say these path-breaking rights affirming efforts never happened.
Mediation, unlike adjudication, is supposed to be a win-win, give and take exercise. It operates on the principle that both society and people benefit when disputes are peaceably resolved. Yet any legal proceedings against persons with intellectual disability or persons with mental illness or persons with high support needs have been kept out of the purview of this law. Other people’s unhappiness or disagreement with them cannot be peaceably settled, be it in individual or community mediation. No one can be compelled to go for mediation and this non compulsion would as much apply to people with disabilities as to others .
From such a framing of the bill it appears as though people with disabilities either do not have any requirement for mediation or their representation or need for mediation is dispensable. What the law has done is that it has denied to persons with disabilities the option to settle disputes amicably. With this one act these persons with disabilities have been rendered invisible by the law. When people are barred from having any grievance against any member of a community then people prefer to have nothing to do with them : they are shunned or socially ostracised. Yet the UN Convention and our national laws speak about giving all persons with disabilities the right to live independently and in the community. So who will solve their disputes if they have any? Or will they continue to either be socially ostracised or face continued prejudice and violence of diverse sorts?
The lawmakers of the country are expected to make law with full knowledge and understanding of what they have the power to do and not do. To honour the international commitments of the country and not override special laws through general laws is a part of the commitment. Furthermore, it is in order to enable course correction and ensure that laws made are not opposed to the interests of the people; that rules for pre-legislative public participation have been formulated. The rules require that at least a period of 30 days must be given to the people to offer their comments and suggestions. Even that period has been unilaterally cut down to fifteen days by the Parliamentary Standing Committee. So, the doors of the Standing Committee have been shut on us even before the invitation to participate could reach us.
Clause 7 of the Bill read along with Schedule 1 ought to be closely examined so that stigma prevailing against persons with disabilities is not mechanically reinforced by the law. Through this open letter we are conveying our dismay to the Parliamentary Standing Committee and urge it to fulfil its duties in both letter and spirit by recommending that schedule 1 of the Bill be duly amended.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse - neither for the people nor for the governors.
Endorsed on 17 February 2022 by
AMITA DHANDA (Professor Emerita, NALSAR Hyderabad)
PRATEEKSHA SHARMA (Peer psychotherapist, Founder Bright Side Family Counselling Centre)
DISABILITY RIGHTS ALLIANCE (DRA)
NATIONAL CENTRE FOR PROMOTION OF EMPLOYMENT FOR DISABLED PEOPLE (NCPEDP)
NATIONAL PLATFORM FOR THE RIGHTS OF THE DISABLED
PASCHIM BANGA RAJYA PRATHIBANDHI SAMMELANI
TAMILNADU ASSOCIATION FOR RIGHTS OF DIFFERENTLY-ABLED & CAREGIVERS
DIFFERENTLY-ABLED WELFARE FEDERATION, KERALA
VIKALANGULA HAKKULA JATHIYA VEDIKA, TELANGANA
VIKALANGULA HAKKULA JATHIYA VEDIKA, AP
HARYANA VIKLANG ADHIKAR MANCH, HARYANA
KARNATAKA RAJYA ANGAVIKALARA MATTU PALAKARA OKKOTA
TRIPURA PRATHIBANDHI ADHIKAR MANCH
GUJARAT VIKLANG ADHIKAR MANCH
LAKSHWADEEP DISABLED ASSOCIATION
MADHYA PRADESH VIKLANG ADHIKAR MANCH
JHARKHAND VIKLANG MORCHA
DELHI VIKLANG ADHIKAR MANCH
TEAM EKTHA
DECEMBER 3 MOVEMENT
EQUALS CENTRE FOR PROMOTION OF SOCIAL JUSTICE (EQUALS CPSJ)
SHISHU SAROTHI
VIDYA SAGAR
BAPU TRUST
VAISHNAVI JAYAKUMAR (Co-Founder The Banyan, Member Disability Rights Alliance)
SUDHA RAMAMOORTHY (Equals Centre for Promotion of Social Justice)
DR. ANJLEE AGARWAL (Executive Director, Samarthyam / Member, NITI Aayog [CSO-SC])
POONAM NATARAJAN (Founder Vidya Sagar)
SATHISH KUMAR (Member Disability Rights Alliance)
MEENAKSHI BALASUBRAMANIAN (Co-founder Equals Centre for Promotion of Social Justice)
DR V JANAKI, CHENNAI
SANGEETA ISVARAN
T M RAMANA RAO
KARTHIK
DR. SRINIVAS GOLI (Medical Officer, North Delhi Municipal Corporation)
ARMAN ALI (Executive Director, NCPEDP)
UMMUL KHAIR (Advocate with disability, Member DRA)
RADHA RAMESH (Director, Vidya Sagar)
DR MS KETNA MEHTA (Founder Trustee, Nina Foundation)
RAJESH (Accessibility consultant)
VIDHYA RAMASUBBAN
DR SATENDRA SINGH (Doctors with Disabilities: Agents of Change)
LV JAYASHREE (Director, The Spastics Society of Tamil Nadu)
GOPINATH RAMAKRISHNAN (Managing Trustee, Special Child Assistance Network [SCAN])
RAMANATHAN G
RAJUL PADMANABHAN
SMITHA SADASIVAN
P RAJASEKHARAN (Co-founder, v-shesh)
DR. LALITHKUMAR NATARAJAN (Love and Acceptance & Tamil Nadu Spinal Cord Disabilities Association)
PROF. YASMIN SULTANA (Head Pharmaceutics, SPER, Jamia Hamdard)
MOHD FAISAL NAWAZ (Disability Rights Activist)
PAWAN KUMAR MUNTHA (CEO, Swadhikaar)
Vaishnavi Jayakumar (Inclusive India)
Perhaps before forwarding, we could prefix this call to action for clarity's sake :
Dear Friends,Please support India's disability movement by endorsing the form http://bit.ly/endorsement-formDetails of how the Mediation Bill is a retrograde step vis a vis persons with disabilities are below for your reference.Do circulate this widely so that other concerned citizens and diverse peoples' movements join us and push back.Thanks!-------------------------
endorsedSandhya
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----SandhyaSandhya Limaye, Ph.D.,Rockefeller Fellow " Bellagio Resident"Fulbright and Erasmus Mundus Fellow
Professor,
Center For Disability Studies and Action,
School of Social Work,
Tata Institute of Social Sciences,
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Ph- +91 022 25525402 (O)
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