The launching last week of Malta’s 2021-2030 National Strategy on the Rights of Disabled Persons, ‘Libertà li Tgħix/Freedom to Live’, was not merely another electoral pledge fulfilled to help tick yet another manifesto box. While it firmly confirms the government’s unbridled commitment to social inclusion, equality and well-being, it is a strategy unequivocally aimed at establishing a better future for all people with a disability in Malta and Gozo.
The strategy lays out the best way to give the Maltese disability sector a solid direction through plans that should come to fruition by 2030, the year identified by the United Nations for the implementation of its Sustainable Development aims.
However, we could hardly expect to submit such an ambitious strategy without a public consultation process and the invaluable input of all stakeholders, from the people with a disability themselves and their families, professionals in the sector, academics, NGOs and state agencies whose dedication to the cause was paramount for determining the needs on the ground.
Malta now has a road map to achieve, not without its challenges but full of new opportunities to eventually cement all that has been achieved during the past eight years. When Malta ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disablities in 2012, it was committing itself to implementing the main principle behind the Convention – ‘Nothing About Us, Without Us’.
Two years later, just a few months since taking power, we presented a National Policy for Persons with a Disability, a worthy precursor to the ‘Libertà li Tgħix/Freedom to Live’ strategy, which we now seek to fulfil with all its 13 objectives, each bound by 63 different and deadlined actions.
No less important is the setting up of a national coordination structure, one of the obligations under the United Nations Convention. This will monitor and oversee the implementation, at national level, of all the key obligations in the convention, which means it will have a fundamental role towards ensuring a coordinated approach in the implementation process and follow-up procedures.
To further add muscle to this nine-year project, for the first time a legally-sanctioned forum will be set up to allow representatives of different entities working in the Maltese disability sector to meet on a regular basis and to cooperate better in technical matters. Their work will be abetted by an inter-ministerial committee making sure technical decisions are worked upon, within the established deadlines, by the different ministries and parliamentary secretariats according to their portfolios.
Another important link in the defined chain of actions will be the setting up of ‘ENGAGE’, Malta’s Civil Society Participation forum for the Disability sector, within the Directorate for Disability Issues, with the aim of giving a constant voice to disabled people and civil society. It will bring together disabled people, their families as well as academics, NGO representatives and the Commission for the Rights of Persons with a Disability (CRPD), the National Disability Regulator.
Are we on the right track? We’d like to think so but it still is good to know the government’s strategy has already received the attention – and praise – of United Nations officials, among them the Director for Inclusive Social Development and the Special Rapporteur for the Rights of Persons with a Disability.
It all goes to show the ‘Libertà li Tgħix/Freedom to Live’ strategy is no idle exercise in filling gaps but a veritable commitment to make of it an instrument that Maltese society could use effectively by way of achieving the highest levels of social inclusion and equality.
The mountain of work ahead of us and all those involved, to whom I am extremely grateful for their input, is a source of encouragement as well as a challenge we take up only too happily.
Malta has seen an electoral pledge fulfilled, a robust and innovative strategy woven as part of a collective national effort to pave the way for the nine years of implementation ahead of us and the emergence of a just and secure future for all Maltese and Gozitan people with a disability.