Arriving in New York over the weekend before the first day of the UN 57th Session was exciting and we were rearing to go with an open mind wanting to listen, meet and greet new people that can help our organisation forward our agenda on helping people with disabilities. We had all our documentations ready for the week to begin.
Monday morning on 11th February 2019, it was bitterly cold, the floor was icy from the previous snow storm. We managed to take pictures outside of the UN headquarters (see below). We collected our passes at the front door and walked through without any problems, once we got in and was escorted to our seats the headphones were not long enough to reach me (Pradip) so they had to search for one immediately this was rectified even though we had emailed them and informed them a few weeks before about his access needs.
We attended many side events over the 2 weeks which broaden our minds. Below is a list of side events we attended for the first week.
1. Homelessness: A prominent Sign of Social Inequalities – each country spoke about their issues on homelessness and what they are doing to tackle the problem.
2. Family Policies and their Contribution to the Achievement
3. The importance of Family Stability to Achieve Sustainable Development
4. The Doha Briefing to Present the Civil Society Statement on Parenting
5. Is Target 5.4 a Utopia?
6. Social Protection as a Strategy to Addressing Inequalities and Challenges to Social Inclusion.
7. Social Protection to Reduce Inequalities and Enhance Social Inclusion in Countries Affected by Conflict
8. Addressing Social Inequalities through Non-Humanitarian Aids: Turkey’s Social Support to less Developed Communities
9. 1. To Survive and Thrive for New Digital Reality: Threats and Answers, Decision and Practices – how disabled people survive in the digital world and become independent. The organisation YAI International providing assistance to organization…
10. Accountability Dimension: Social Protecton as a Tool for the Reduction of Inequalities
11. Innovations for Inequality Reducing Social Protection Policies in Europe and Africa
12. Inclusive education for children and young people with disabilities – young people tend to get side lined so we need to include them into mainstream society.
13. Towards Family Sensitive Social Proection
14. Building Effective Social Accountability Mechanisms at the Local Level to Ensure Social Protection
15. A Human Dignity and Faith Perspective Addressing Inequalities and Challenges to Social Inclusion for Those Imprisoned in our Global Criminal Justice and Prion Systems.
16. Connected Technology, Social Inclusion, and Democratization of Information: Giving Voice to the Voiceless
Pradip and Philip Alston (UN Human Rights Council)
We had the opportunity to connect with Philip Alston who is a Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, UN Human Rights Council, Professor of Law, New York University School of Law. We had a discussion about his speech and exchanged contact details in order to keep in touch regarding our work at APDA and what we can do to get involved in
Philip Alston’s speech at the UN Session
Pradip and Helen Mudora Obande (APSP)
We had the pleasure of meeting Helen Mudora a Program Manager in charge of Partnerships and Net Development at the Africa Platform for Social Protection (APSP) she is a human rights defender with a special interest in vulnerable groups .
Valerie R. Still and Pradip
It was lovely meeting Valrie Still who is a US former Basket Ball player in the US and abroad. Thank you for sending your book and kind message and connecting with us on the day.
Other pictures
