The Initial review of Singapore for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is expected to take place in 2020. In order to start the elaboration process of its parallel reports on the implementation of the CRPD in Singapore, Disabled People’s Association (DPA: http://www.dpa.org.sg/) organized CRPD Parallel Report Workshop on 20 and 21 March 2018 in central Singapore. The workshop was attended by more than 40 Singaporean leaders with disabilities, who were very much engaged. It included disability studies scholars as well.
The Research Center for Ars Vivendi of Ritsumeikan University co-organized the workshops and provided the expertise of Prof. Nagase Osamu of the Center who facilitated the workshop, which identified 10 priority issues for the CRPD implementation in Singapore and simulated the drafting of List of Issues and Concluding Observations. Prof. Nagase’s international CRPD experiences include presentations in South Korea, Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, USA, Colombia, and Ireland as well as workshops in Mongolia, Taiwan and Myanmar.
The workshop was graced by the presence of Mrs. Regina Chandran-Dudley, spouse of late Ron Chandran-Dudley, the inaugural chair of Disabled Peoples’ International (DPI), that was founded in Singapore in 1981 and who also played a major role founding DPA.
“It is such an honor and privilege for me to work with the Singaporean disability community for this workshop in Singapore” said Prof. Nagase, who worked with Mr. Chandran-Dudley as a DPI Asia Pacific Regional Programme Officer in Tokyo from 1987 to 1992.
DPA, led by Mr Richard Chien-Ming Kuppusamy, will lead the Singaporean efforts to provide the CRPD Committee with up-to-date and on-the-ground information from the civil society and disability community of Singapore.