International Day for People with Disabilities

On Monday, December 3rd, the International Day for People with Disabilities was celebrated, an occasion that reiterated the commitments to remove the existing barriers that prevent people with disabilities from fully exercising their rights. 15% of the world’s population lives with a form of disability. Whether the daily life of these people is easy or not depends largely on the degree of accessibility and adaptability to everything around them. At the European Union level, one in six people suffer from a disability. In Romania, the total number of people with disabilities, in March 2018, was of 805,1591, increasing by about 1 percent. Of these, 426,550 are women, and 63,217 are children. 60% of children with disabilities are severely disabled. Over 88% of Romanian citizens with disabilities have a severe or accentuated degree of disability. Every day, people with disabilities are forced to face multiple challenges. Beyond the negative stereotypes and lack of awareness, we see that the exercise of fundamental rights and freedoms is restricted in different ways. For example, most apartment buildings and public utility buildings remain inaccessible due to the lack of ramps; public transport services have a low degree of accessibility; assistive technologies and devices are difficult to obtain because of the high costs; the education system fails to fully respond to their specific needs and way of learning, and access to the labor market is drastically limited. The reality is not happy at all and efforts are required on our part in order for people with disabilities to truly benefit from fundamental human rights.

Political statement dated December 05, 2018