News

Inclusive education will be the focus of the 2014 Global Action Week entitled ‘Equal Right, Equal Opportunity: Education and Disability’. The event, scheduled for 4-10 May is organised by the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), a broad civil society coalition advocating for free and compulsory, quality public basic education for all children.

The 11th session of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities will take place between the 31st of March and 11th of April 2014, at Palais Wilson, in Geneva.

The European Association of Service Providers for Persons with Disabilities (EASPD) has published a briefing paper analysing the current state of the Social Services labour market, in terms of its job creation potential, development barriers, and problem areas where the European Commission should further concentrate its efforts.

World Down Syndrome Day, celebrated on the 21st of March of each year, is a good occasion for persons with Down syndrome around the world to make a statement and demand equal rights and opportunities.

It is positive to see the European Council calling for “stepping up efforts to reach the Europe 2020 targets”. This supports the request of employment and social affairs ministers during their EPSCO meeting last week to “strengthen their efforts to reduce poverty”.

The Council of Europe has launched two new online resource platforms comprising a revamped online bookshop and a free documentation resource for the general public.

Twenty European networks working with children and families announced the creation of the ‘EU Alliance for Investing in Children’.

The European Network of Independent Living (ENIL) in collaboration with the European Disability Forum (EDF) and the European Foundation Centre’s Consortium on Human Rights and Disability (EFC) launched a campaign to highlight the impact of disability cuts in the anticipation of the European Parliament elections of May 2014.

The registration for our annual ‘Europe in Action’ conference is now open. The event will take place on 15-17 May 2014 in Belfast in Northern Ireland under the theme ‘Growing up with an intellectual disability’ and it is organised in cooperation with Mencap.

On 24 February 2014, Udruga za Samozastupanje - the Croatian Association for Self Advocacy, GONG and Disability Ombudsman Office organized a roundtable meeting in the Croatian Parliament within the framework of an EU-funded project Human Rights Advocacy through Learning by Doing.