UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon delivers a speech on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities

Recently, the United Nations website released the theme of 2015 International Day of Persons with Disabilities:

“Inclusiveness comes first: empowering all disabled persons with barrier-free facilities and capabilities.”

The Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon delivered a speech as follows:

We ushered in this year’s International Day of Persons with Disabilities after the adoption of the ambitious 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.This global blueprint for action requires us to “not leave anyone behind.”

Building a sustainable and inclusive world for all requires the full participation of people of all abilities, regardless of whether they are disabled or not. The 2030 Agenda contains many issues of concern to persons with disabilities, and we must work together to turn these commitments into actions.

Earlier this year, the Third United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction recognized that persons with disabilities can play an important role in promoting disaster prevention and relief work with fewer obstacles.Next year, the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) will discuss a new urban development agenda to make our cities inclusive, barrier-free and sustainable.The voice of the disabled is vital to this process.

As we look to the future, we must strengthen development policies and practices to ensure that accessibility is part of inclusive and sustainable development.This requires increasing our understanding of the challenges faced by all persons with disabilities-including collecting more robust and disaggregated data for this purpose, and ensuring that persons with disabilities are empowered so that they can create and take advantage of opportunities.

Together with the disabled, we can push the world forward together without leaving anyone behind.


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