The Conference ‘’Talking with Parents’’

Bucharest December 12^th, 2014, The European Center for the Rights of Children with Disabilities (ECRCD) in partnership with The Romanian-American University, is organizing on Friday, December 12^th, the Conference : ‘’ Talking with Parents – the situation of the rights of children with disabilities in Romania’’.

With the occasion of International Human Rights Day, the conference has set itself to bring in attention the situation of the rights of children with disabilities in Romania at the end of 2014, starting from the casuistry of ECRCD, the casuistry of the main types of violation of those laws, as well as the necessary steps on this line.

Thereby, in 2014 alone, ECRCD registered 387 requests for counseling and assistance by the parents of children with disabilities. The main types of rights violations were in regard to the following fields:

We need to specify that, even though on the top of the requests regarding the violation of certain rights are situated aspects concerning the degree of handicap and not paying the allowances for personal assistant, in more than 85% of the total number of requests, parents signaled  problems related to education.

In that context, given the limited resources of a non-governmental organization, ECRCD has offered assistance as it follows:

-   Counseling and direct assistance ( face-to-face) – 44 cases

-   Online counseling – 267 cases

-   Telephonic counseling ( counseling via telephone ) – 76 cases

-   21 contestations in framing the degree of handicap

-   1 definitive decision – Court of Appeal Craiova – degree of handicap

-   33 complaints regarding not paying the allowances for personal assistant

-   28 referral procedures at the level of scholar inspectorates concerning the restricting access on education 

-   2 referral procedures at the level of scholar inspectorates concerning the curricula adaptation and the examination

-   2 complaints in the National Council for Combatting Discrimination

-   Mediating the relationship with scholar representatives

-   Identification solutions for complicated medical situations in the private sphere

Regarding the geographical allocation of the situations in which the rights of children with disabilities were violated, the analysis reflected the following:

‘’Those numbers don’t only reflect the effort of our organization, but they show a massive phenomenon of violation of the rights of children with disabilities in Romania. In the context in which 387 of the parents’ requests were addressed to a non-governmental organization, the active role of the state’s authorities in accomplishing that mission is clearly missing. Using this step, we want to warn, especially about the right to education of children with disabilities, which is the main point of the violations. We draw the attention of the competent authorities about the fact that the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities imposes clear and firm obligations on inclusive education’’ , declares Madalina Turza, president of ECRCD.

Background information:

The total number of people with disabilities worldwide is about 1 billion – they represent about 15% of the global population, and more than 80% of those persons are living in developing countries.

Most of those people face discrimination, abuse and isolation.

Examples: institutionalization, the absence of education, the impossibility of hiring, the denial of the right to property, the denial of the right to make decisions etc.

The discrimination is wide-spread and it affects people from all social spheres.

DISCRIMINATION is largely spread and affects people from all social classes.

The total number of people with disabilities in Romania is 709.216, from which 70.647 are children and 31.132 of them are unschooled.

Amongst the registered children with disabilities, 1.769 are framed in a mild degree of handicap; 20.121 are framed in medium degree of handicap; 13.861 are framed in pronounced degree of handicap, and 34.905 children are framed in grave degree of handicap.

E-mail: madalina.turza@cedcd.ro/old

Mob: +40737545955

Fax: 0217952465