Working together on disability rights and violence against women

The Australian Human Rights Commission and Komnas Perempuan (the National Commission on Violence against Women) will work together to raise awareness and build strategic alliances on disability rights and to respond to violence against women. This cooperation agreement supports Indonesia’s ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (DisCo) in October 2011. 

The deputy chair of Commission VIII overseeing religious and social affairs, Chairunnisa, said the ratification “represented a new dawn for national law reform, especially in fulfilling the rights of persons with disabilities,” and called for legal certainty, sufficient funding, and a preparedness of all stakeholders to implement the law.

AIPJ supported a meeting between the Australian Human Rights Commission and Komnas Perempuan in November 2011. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss areas of collaboration in 2012.  These include in-house training for Komnas Perempuan on DisCo and its intersection with key UN Human Rights Conventions, such as the Convention on the Elimination of Violence against Women, the Convention against Torture and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, all of which are within Komnas Perempuan’s mandate. 

Following the in-house training for Komnas Perempuan, other stakeholders from government and civil society organisations across Indonesia will have the opportunity to learn more about DisCo. Disability organisations from Australia will be involved. A special focus will be the writing of international human rights reports.