On November 11, 2022, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine registered a draft Law on Amendments to Certain Laws of Ukraine on Ensuring the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to Work (No. 5344-д https://itd.rada.gov.ua/billInfo/Bills/Card/40853).
Draft Law №5344-d caused an ambiguous, sometimes sharply negative, reaction in the public sector, primarily among public associations of persons with disabilities.
The team of the NGO "Public movement "Social Unity" analyzed the provisions of draft law No. 5344-d and singled out some of its provisions that cause serious concern.
Draft Law No. 5344-d, along with progressive provisions aimed at reforming the issue of employment of disabled people, proposes to exclude from the current legislation of Ukraine the norms that meet the requirements of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, which does not correspond to modern approaches to the issue of disability established by the Convention. Draft Law No. 5344-d contains a number of regulations that create additional obstacles and barriers for people with disabilities, deepen segregation and ultimately lead to a worsening of the situation of disabled people, which is unacceptable for a country that is a candidate for the EU.
Draft Law No. 5344-d unreasonably narrows the categories of enterprises that can use financial support to ensure the employment of persons with disabilities, sets such requirements for the activities of such enterprises, the implementation of which, instead of destroying barriers, will create new ones that are much more insurmountable and will lead not to integration, but to further segregation of people with disabilities.
Also, the draft law proposes to legislate the definition of "disability" as "the functional limitation of a person to interact equally and barrier-free with society in all spheres of life due to physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments of the body".
However, establishing the social status of a "person with a disability" by referring to "disability" on any grounds degrades dignity and establishes a basic perception as an inferior member of society unable to "interact equally and without barriers with society...".
It was the Soviet system of views on disability that led and still leads to the fact that a person with a disability is isolated from childhood in specialized educational institutions, has an extremely limited choice of future profession, mostly undergoes vocational and technical training in specially created vocational and technical education institutions, mostly receives a low-skilled specialty, gets a job in a specialized enterprise, where mostly people with disabilities work, receives an extremely low salary, lives in a dormitory of such an enterprise, without having an objective opportunity to break out of this cluster and claim a higher standard of living and the full realization of one's abilities. At the same time, this situation is actively lobbied by public associations created at the beginning of the 20th century, since since Soviet times they administer all the necessary links of the existence of this system and actively speculate on the topic of disability, belittling the ability of people with disabilities to study, work and self-realize.
At the same time, the ideas of the civilized world regarding disability issues are aimed at integrating people with disabilities into society, providing them with equal rights by first of all ensuring equal opportunities and creating special conditions for revealing and realizing the potential of disabled people. According to this model, a person with a disability turns from a victim and a subject constantly in need of help into an equal participant in social relations - active, proactive and promising.
In recent years, thanks to the activities of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi and First Lady Olena Zelenskyi, our society has finally begun to adopt the world experience of building a "society for all" and move away from the Soviet understanding of disability. However, the adoption of such provisions will erase the titanic efforts and shifts that have taken place over the past three years. And the circumstances of our society's existence, caused by the war, do not give us the moral opportunity to allow a return to the Soviet model of segregating people with disabilities, which one way or another is provided for by the provisions of draft law No. 5344-d in the current version outlined above.
The Organization's comments on draft law No. 5344-d are submitted by representatives of our Organization in the work of the Expert Council under the Representative of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine's Commissioner for Human Rights and Social and Economic Rights. Also, these comments were addressed to the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine, the First Lady of Ukraine, the Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for Human Rights, the Counselor - the authorized representative of the President of Ukraine for barrier-free issues, the Representative of the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for social and economic rights, Government Commissioner for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
The full text of our comments on draft law No. 5344-d can be found in the enclosure.
