Disabled Peoples' International
Sapporo Platform
October 2002

A DPI call to disabled people throughout the world:

Peace
As disabled people we are opposed to wars, violence and forms of oppression. Daily, men, women and children are being disabled by anti-personnel landmines and forms of armed destruction and torture. We must work for a world other where all people can live in peace and express their diversity and their desires.

A Strong Voice of Our Own
Disabled Peoples' International must continue to grow in strength and voice. We are the experts on our situation and we must be consulted at all levels, on all initiatives concerning us. If we are to achieve a strong voice we must be united in our work, we must build a strong organization. We must share our knowledge, our experiences and our resources and encourage youth leadership. We must use technology as a vehicle to communicate, to discuss and to promote our issues and concerns.

Human Rights
As a human rights organization, we must seek support for a convention that will protect and respect our human rights. We must educate ourselves, civil society as well as our government representatives at all levels. We must learn from the strategies and successes of others such as landmines survivors and women. Our rights are violated on a daily basis, we must continue to gather the evidence.

Diversity Within
In our work, our organization at all levels must ensure the inclusion of women, youth and other minorities. We must ensure participation through equality of language. We must strive to uphold our commitment to our official languages of French, Spanish and English and sign language. We are a cross disability organization and we must ensure all materials are accessible in format.



Bioethics
We must become part of the discussion on genetics and bioethics. We must assert our right to be different. We must repudiate any discussion that links the concept of "person" to a set of abilities. We must promote disability studies to change the image of disability in a positive way among academics.

Independent Living
Self-determination and independent living is fundamental to our human rights. We must undertake a program of people with disabilities and civil society on the concept of independent living. We must consider our cultural difference in adapting independent living in some countries.

Inclusive Education
Full participation starts in childhood in the classroom, in the play areas and in programs and services. When children with disabilities sit side by side with other children, our communities are enriched by the awareness and acceptance of all children. We must urge governments throughout the world to eradicate segregated education and to establish an inclusive education policy.

International development 
International Development organization must evaluate their policies, programs and services to ensure the inclusion of disabled people. We must encourage our governments who financially support these agencies to include specific policies that ensure the full participation of disabled peoples by the provision of accessible and appropriate service delivery.

Public Awareness
Our issues are many - income generation, education, impact of poverty etc. We must educate civil society as well as our political representation on our concerns. We must use every opportunity to seek publicity and awareness. We must seek to change negative images of disabled people as equal participants in our society.

Share the Knowledge
As participants of this assembly, we are the fortunate few who have come here to listen to each other, to discuss our views and opinions and to reaffirm our communicate to our grass roots comrades what has taken place here. While we feel empowered by this great assembly of 3000 people we must now empower other who could not attend.

This is our challenge. This is our task.