A bill that aims to make the right to a dignified existence of people with disabilities and their families enforceable

Rome,
Circolo Canottieri Aniene

The growing gap between citizens with disabilities (together with their families) and the policies that are registered in our country are not attributable only to indifference or protest, more or less conscious, against an inadequate and corrupt political class. It indicates something more serious: a radical loss of faith in democracy as a vehicle for change and social emancipation, which today particularly affects the most disadvantaged.

To use an oxymoron, people with disabilities without politics: like saying parents without children. Traveling around Italy, (swimming), I was able to see a total disaffection for the institutions, people in the throes of resignation because disabilities often translate into handicaps, (limitations), in relation to barriers, (legal, architectural, psychological and social), which meet on a daily basis.

The low interest of persons with disabilities and their families in politics reflects the low interest of politics in persons with disabilities and their families. Politics in Italy has become an entertainment game for the upper middle classes. A game that does not thrill, and does not involve, those who, due to barriers, especially legal ones, have lost all hope in the possibility of a collective solution to their problems.

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.

For all this, I am working on a bill that aims to make the right to a dignified existence of people with disabilities and their families enforceable. A bill that aims to extend, also to civil invalids, as is already the case for injured people at work, to benefit from the most advanced technologies and treatments referred to in law no. 18 of 3 March 2009, with which Parliament authorized the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities.

Every citizen with disabilities has the right to personal mobility with the greatest possible autonomy, this is the principle solemnly affirmed by Article 20 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, of which States Parties shall: facilitate personal mobility in the ways and times chosen by them and at affordable costs; encourage manufacturers of mobility aids, equipment and accessories and support technologies to consider all aspects of the mobility of people with disabilities.

A bill that aims, finally, to affirm the right of citizenship.

Salvatore Cimmino