Ms Eliona Gjecaj:

I would like to start by thanking the committee for having me here today. I am a disability activist from Galway. I am a Caucasian woman, have black hair, and I am wearing a multicoloured top.

Self-advocacy for me started when I acquired my visual impairment, and has continued to this day in different aspects of my life such as education, support services, and participation with local, national and international NGOs. For example, during my undergraduate degree, I co-founded and set up a student society called Inclusion and Participation to Access Community Transformation and Engagement, IMPACTE. This was a society for students with disability. It was a space for self-advocacy as individuals and as a collective. This led to participation of members in a more accessible student life, support for one another, and transformative actions such as a student referendum to establish a disability officer position within the students union of NUI Galway, among other actions.

My point here is not to list what IMPACTE and I have achieved, but rather to highlight that self-advocacy leads to participation, and participation leads to self-advocacy. Self-advocacy, whether as an individual or as part of a collective, is our voice as citizens, as subjects of human rights, as customers and consumers. Participation on the other hand is inclusion, not integration. It is a general obligation of the UNCRPD that states enable, ensure, and provide accessible platforms for us as disabled people, and as disabled women, to have our self-advocacy and our voice heard, listened to, and transformed into actions, and inclusive practices, policies and laws.

Every article of the UNCRPD is interlinked with another, and when we combine self-advocacy and participation, we are to apply that to every article within the UNCRPD, and within every aspect of our lives as disabled people and disabled women. For example, we are to apply that to education, health, support services, family life, equality before the law, access to justice, freedom from violence, exploitation and abuse and so on.

In light of International Women’s Day, I would like to celebrate all the disabled women of Ireland who have come forward, disclosed, spoken up and spoken about gender-based violence against us. Violence does not discriminate, and as research shows, disabled women are at higher risk of experiencing violence compared to non-disabled women. Violence is not taboo, and thus we must continue to self-advocate, so that together we can walk the justice walk, and as a society we can build an inclusive future, free from violence. I thank the committee.