US rejects joining treaty to protect rights of persons with disabilities

The US Senate has failed to ratify an international treaty aimed at protecting the rights of persons with disabilities as a group of hard-line senators opposed the treaty, arguing that it may obstruct US laws.

Although the Senate members voted 61 to 38 on Tuesday in favor of the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, the count fell short of the required two-thirds for signing on to an international pact, local media outlets reported.

The push against the ratification of the 2006 treaty, which forbids discrimination against the disabled, came from conservative Republican Senators despite the existence of an identical law, Americans With Disabilities Act, which was adopted by US Congress in 1990.

Among the pretexts used by the Republican senators to oppose the bill was that since nations such as Iran, China and Syria have signed the bill, “American approval might give the impression that the United States accepts how those nations treat their disabled citizens,” The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

“The hard reality is that there are nation-states, like China, who do like to sign up to these organizations and gain the reputation for doing good things while, in fact, not doing good things,” said Arizona’s Republican Senator Jon Kyl.

This is while 125 nations across the globe, including the European Union, have adopted the international treaty advocating the rights of persons with disabilities.

Other conservatives opposing the bill’s ratification were led by former senator and Republican presidential candidate Rick Santrorum, who has a developmentally disabled child but travelled to Washington last week to urge fellow Republicans to reject the bill, arguing that the treaty “could relinquish US sovereignty to a UN committee charged with overseeing a ban on discrimination,” according to the report.

“This is a direct assault on us,” Santorum said.

The likelihood of the bill’s rejection grew after Santorum and Utah Senator Mike Lee announced that they had gathered the signature of 36 fellow Republicans on a letter opposing the adoption of the measure.