Will a person instead of ‘disabled’ appear in Ukraine?

Since July 6, the corrections have been made to the official Ukrainian translation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Ukrainian version previously contained the word “disabled.”

The corrected text of the Convention was posted on the portal of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.

Now the wording of all the other official Ukrainian regulations, which contain a word “disabled” in their text, should be corrected.

The Human Rights Information Centre recalls that when the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine ratified the Convention in 2009, an error in translation was made. Thus, the UN General Assembly adopted the title of the document in the English language – the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. However, when translated into Ukrainian, the official title became the Convention on the Rights of Disabled Persons. The important word “person” was removed from the wording.

All the other regulations also used the word “disabled.”

In December 2015, editor-in-chief of the Human Rights Information Centre Iryna Vyrtosu published the article “There is no disabled. There is person”, calling to use word combination “person with disabilities” instead of “disabled” at least in journalistic materials as the official documents were not corrected at that time yet.

Now we have corrected wording, but it is still very difficult to call the official translation perfect, says Yulia Sachuk, the Vice President of NGO of people with disabilities “Generation of Successful Action.”

The expert says that such a change can hardly be viewed as a victory, because the Convention, being one of the main tools for protection of the rights of people with disabilities around the world, is a very important document for Ukraine, the content and the text of which influences the further development of legislation in this area. Therefore abandoned errors, inaccuracies, and mistakes will continue to negatively affect the lives of people with disabilities.

 “Unfortunately, we have so few of those who can understand this, we badly lack the experts in the area of disability. That is why the long-awaited event, which was being prepared by so many people, has become so questionable victory,” Sachuk said.