Love for democracy
Salvatore Cimmino
The importance of having an International Convention – on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – is given by the fact that it is equivalent to a law: it is a legal instrument which, once ratified, as has happened in at least 1/3 of the member countries of the United Nations, it becomes binding for all countries that have ratified it and that must respect them in concrete laws and policies.
In Italy, the last legislatures, in particular the last, no doubt, have tried to give answers to citizens with disabilities who risk marginalization and social exclusion on a daily basis, through measures that are certainly noteworthy in their intentions, but which have proved to be absolutely insufficient to really protect, day after day, the fundamental rights of people with disabilities due, above all, to the lack of appropriate resources and therefore of collectability.
As long as the Italian political class will put the containment of spending before protecting the rights of its citizens with disabilities, Italy will remain a sick country and cannot be called civil or democratic.
In view of the upcoming elections, it will be fundamental, I believe, for those who intend to protect the rights of persons with disabilities, to deepen their knowledge of the United Nations Convention to safeguard the principles of freedom and equality that support it.
Paraphrasing Piero Calamandrei, if you want to go on pilgrimage to the place where the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was born, go to the places where people with disabilities live, to the houses where they are imprisoned by physical, social and moral barriers, in nursing homes where they die from covid19. Wherever a person with disabilities is imprisoned, to redeem freedom and dignity, go there, in thought, because there the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was born.
Love like democracy is a great word whose history has not yet been written: only if we are madly in love (with an Idea) will we be able to flood the world.
Salvatore Cimmino