Honourable Ministers

Director-General

Excellencies

Distinguished Delegates

Ladies and Gentlemen

Mr President,

Our delegation congratulates you on your election as Chair of this historic Diplomatic Conference. We are confident that under your able leadership, and with the support of delegates committed to the promotion and protection of human rights, we will reach a successful outcome and adopt a landmark treaty.

We would also like to express our gratitude to the Kingdom of Morocco for the warm welcome extended to our delegation and would like to reassure them of our commitment towards ensuring the success of this conference.

We would also like to thank the WIPO International Bureau, as well as delegations who have actively participated in the negotiations to produce the draft treaty we have today, for the hard work done in preparing for this Conference.

Chairperson,

At the outset, South Africa wants to place it on record that we align ourselves with the statement made by Algeria on behalf of the African Group.

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision”

As we begin our work in Marrakesh, it is imperative that we remind ourselves of these words by Helen Keller, and that we deliberate within the spirit of international human rights instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Africa Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, among others.

The Treaty in front of us brings together these human rights instruments within the context of profit, and provides industry with a unique opportunity to attach a cost to their commitment to the international human rights agenda.

It also provides an opportunity for some governments and regional bodies to act in the interest of all their citizens, and not to yield to influential lobby groups protecting profit at the cost of some.

Chairperson,

This is not a treaty being negotiated between the developed and developing worlds, as often portrayed, but is essentially between governments protecting industry and governments protecting their citizens who are marginalised from accessing the products of industry.

This treaty is about equality of opportunity for people who have to date been excluded and marginalised due to limitations placed on converting print for people requiring access to it in alternative media.  This treaty is therefore about removing barriers to access and fighting discrimination.

Chairperson,

What is required from this Conference is to display vision by producing a treaty that is simple, clear and workable.

South Africa is but one of the 131 countries, together with the European Union, which ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.  

Article 30 places an obligation on States Parties to

“recognise the right of persons with disabilities to take part on an equal basis with others in cultural life, and shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that persons with disabilities (a) enjoy access to cultural materials in accessible formats...”

This should be read with, amongst others, Article 9, which requires of States Parties to take appropriate measures to ensure that persons with disabilities have access, on an equal basis with others, to information and communication.

This treaty lies at the very heart of the right to access to information.  It is our viewpoint that the outcome of the treaty, if negotiated in the context of universal rights, will fall within the ambit of ‘reasonable accommodation’ as defined in the Convention.

This includes all “necessary and appropriate modification and adjustments not imposing a disproportionate or undue burden, where needed in a particular case, to ensure to persons with disabilities the enjoyment or exercise on an equal basis with others of all human rights and fundamental freedoms’.

Chairperson,

“A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.” 

These words by Philip Randolph, the twentieth century African-American civil rights leader, resonate with the post 1994 South African human rights journey.

Failure by this Conference to reach consensus on the critical outstanding clauses which threatens the very essence of why we have come together, could, within the South African context, be construed as ‘discrimination on the basis of disability’, as defined in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, that is…

"any distinction, exclusion or restriction on the basis of disability which has the purpose or effect of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal basis with others, of all human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field. It includes all forms of discrimination, including denial of reasonable accommodation.”

Our deliberations and negotiations on the remaining outstanding clauses, namely

• commercial availability;

• the right of translation;

• technological protection measures; and

• the three-step test,

should therefore be conducted against this backdrop, and not against the backdrop of protecting profits, or even worse, of extending pity and humanitarian considerations to persons with visual impairments.  

Persons with disabilities across the world in both the developed and developing world have fought long and hard to be recognised as equal citizens of the world.

Let it not be on the conscience of the delegations converged here in Marrakesh that we failed humanity by placing profit ahead of human rights.

May I remind delegates that by taking this opportunity to do what is right, we are also creating a free and equal world for ourselves when disability and old age knocks on our door.

Chairperson,

In conclusion, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr..

• “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

• “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

• “The time is always right to do the right thing”

We would like to assure you of South Africa’s commitment to engage constructively within a human rights context on the treaty.

Thank you.