Message from the CEO – June 2019

ILEP and its Members participated in two significant United Nations events in June.

At the United Nations HQ in New York, a team from TLMI advocated for human rights in leprosy at the Conference of State Parties of the CRPD, the Civil Society Forum immediately before it, and at a side event in collaboration with Disabled Persons International (DPI). One of our shared advocacy aims in these events is for the CRPD Committee to look at leprosy as disabling, not just in terms of physical disability, but also in terms of the emotional and psychological consequences of stigma and social exclusion.

Meanwhile in Geneva, Alice Cruz, the UN Special Rapporteur on the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members, presented her thematic report to the UN Human Rights Council. Her report focused especially on human rights abuses affecting women and children. The ILEP Office supported the Japanese Permanent Mission and others in a side event, with Alice as keynote speaker, about how to fulfil the 2030 Agenda for stigmatised social groups.

Reports on the New York and Geneva events can be read in this Update.